A Review of SXSW 2025

Are we human, or are we consumer?

In January, I attended a “Tacos & Topics” event with the Austin Chamber of Commerce. The topic was SXSW, a festival that takes over my mind, body, and soul for 10-ish days every March since 2016. That first year was magical. It was the first time I had heard of Taika Waititi; Hunt for the Wilderpeople was playing at the theater I was volunteering at, three months before it was released. I hopped from Fader Fort to Hype Hotel to Spotify House, running to the volunteers at the door any time I needed more free drink tickets. I saw Josh Homme, Iggy Pop, Jack Garratt, and Anderson .Paak. I got a free selfie stick and I watched a 3D printer make a pizza. I made a festival friend and, years later, we realized we had never actually volunteered at the same venue. We had never been to each other’s venue, either. How did we meet, Craig? How do we know each other?

Fast forward to 2025. Before this Tacos & Topics talk, I had signed up to be a Theater Manager (and earn a platinum badge) for the second time. Some highlights of volunteering from over the years—spending time with my fellow theater managers, helping filmmakers with the world premiere of their movies, showing off my fancy badge—were already baked into the festival. I was going to have a good time no matter what.

So when I left the Tacos & Topics event, I was only mildly cringing thinking about the future of SXSW.

“At most music festivals,” the SXSW rep said, “the music is front and center. Brand activations are off to the side. People don’t pay attention to them as much…But at SXSW, brands are front and center. Like the Tide Pod House! All those college kids had a great time at the Tide Pod House at Wanderlust Wine in 2024, and I know many of those visitors will be Tide loyalists for life.”

The representative from the festival was speaking to folks at an Austin Chamber of Commerce event, and I understand that. Know your audience, blah blah blah. But I remember leaving the event with my face stuck in a cringe snarl. A brand festival? Not what I signed up for. Is this why Anderson .Paak was only playing at a Doritos party in 2023? (One that was notoriously hard to get into, during a thunderstorm. I stayed home.) My uncle saw Pearl Jam in a tiny club back in the early 2000s at SXSW. He lived on Fourth Street for like, $200 a month. What am I going to tell my nephew about SXSW? That I got free shampoo? Great story, Aunt Megan.

How Long Will You Wait for Two Free Beers?

There is one story that stands out in terms of where I think SXSW is going, for me and for other attendees. On the first Saturday of the festival, Katelyn and I went a sumo wrestling event held by a local marketing agency. It was certainly unique; I had never seen sumo wrestlers before. I got food poisoning two days into my Japan trip…but that’s a story for another time. Anyway, the beers were free. Win-win.

I had been warned that the lines for any sort of food or drinks would be long. Most recent, regular SXSW attendees know that there’s a Discord where people can share the status on lines for events. (That’s how I knew not to bother with the Doritos party.) People especially want to know where the free food (or Doritos) and drinks are. It’s not long before word gets out about open bars. On my first day bopping around SXSW, I didn’t expect to wait over an hour for two free beers. Yet, I did.

Katelyn and I held each other’s spots as we got a look at the sumo wrestlers.

About 45 minutes into the line—that point when we realized how much time we put into waiting and the sunk-cost fallacy told us that we had no choice but to follow through—two guys approached me and Katelyn.

“Yo, if we throw you some bread, can we stand with you? We just don’t want to wait in the line.”

To be honest, it was the “bread” that really tipped us off the cliff.

We huffed a rejection to the guys behind us, but they stayed in line. Five minutes of fuming later, Katelyn called them out to the people behind us. “I just think this is messed up,” she told them. The people behind us hadn't realized the guys cut in line, and we all shooed them away and possibly out of the event. I never saw them again. I did see the guy who thanked us for calling them out multiple times during the festival. We gave each other nods as we passed by in the registrant’s lounge or around downtown. Lovely guy.

Katelyn and I stayed at the sumo wrestling event until the end, which is more than 95% of the attendees could say. The free drinks ran out around the time that the sumo wrestling wrapped up, and the mass exodus followed. Never mind the fact that there was a band playing right after. promqueen killed it to the crowd of 50 people who cared to stick around. But the drinks and the sushi had run out. Is that really all people cared about?

Dancing on Dirty

It has been a fun goal in past SXSWs, before the average cocktail was $15, to make it through the festival without paying for a single drink. That part of SXSW is dead. Blame the Discord. Blame the economy. Blame the fact that only 1,000 bands played SXSW this year when in past years, those numbers were doubled. It’s too easy to find the free drinks and too hard to find a venue that hits that good combination of great music and free drinks without an hour-long line. And once things ran out, people got nasty. Attendees feel entitled to whatever’s being given out—I know that first hand as a volunteer—and that really gets to some people. I had casually asked a Nobull representative at the registrant’s lounge about the free shoes that had been given out every day and I was met with an eye roll and cagey answers. I’m sure he had been hounded with questions and huffs and puffs and emotions from people who felt entitled to their sneakers, but I was just asking a question. Geez. I asked another woman about a raffle drawing, and she gave me a squint and oozed out a snarky, “Sorry you didn’t win anything.” Geeeeez.

Once I let go of the idea that I was going to get anything for free at SXSW, I started having more fun. I walked right into shows at Inn Cahoots and Mohawk and Radio East and met up with friends by the dozens. I took “our” pedi-cab from High Noon to Dirty Sixth and reconnected with Brandon, “our” driver. At Blind Pig, where my phone’s service used to shut down because of packed streets, I attended shows of six people and one service dog and scream-sang to a cover of…Creed? I think it was Creed. I met fewer people but I spent more time with the people I did meet, and those people are more likely to be ones that I see throughout the year anyway. I saw Dope Lemon, Dune Rats, Frankie and the Witch Fingers, Skateland, Tomar and the FCs, and more. I tried not to look around too often and ask where all the people were.

Yes, I got free drinks at the Rivian activation, but the highlight of that was seeing St. Vincent captivate the whole audience with a guitar and a piano. The free Redbreast drinks weren’t as exciting as being able to fit 10 theater managers in a photo booth. I didn’t even drink the free tequila shots at One More Shot, but I did meet an Eagles fan and really enjoyed the movie.

Again, I don’t know who’s to blame for the recent calls that SXSW is dead. The Tide Pods house is cringe, but so are the people who wait in a line for free laundry detergent. Spotify House is lame because it doesn’t offer four free drink tickets anymore but I’m lame for not being able to remember who played at Spotify House the year I did get four free drink tickets. My uncle never told me about free drinks at SXSW; he told me about the chance encounters of seeing undiscovered artists at tiny venues. Too bad those undiscovered artists have less incentive to go to the festival and will face more competition to be seen among panels, brand activations, and films when the festival changes its dates next year. Too bad the bigwigs at the music industry want to sign viral TikTok artists and not good quality bands who put on a show in front of 50 people at a sumo wrestling event.

SXSW isn’t dead—all of our priorities are just rotten. Brands and people alike are trying to preserve our bottom lines at the expense of a good time. I’m undecided about volunteering again next year, but I do know that I’m going to be more spontaneous in going to events and less interested in walking away with free stuff.