Austin Texas Real Estate: In the decades following, Austin gained a reputation as a place where musicians who were just starting out or who were struggling to reach the big-time could launch their careers in live venues in front of open minded audiences. This would ultimately lead to the city’s official motto and reputation as “The Live Music Capital of the World.” In 1976, Austin City Limits first aired as a program created with its pulse on Texas music, featuring well known artists who created music in genres ranging from swing to Tejano music, rock n roll and progressive country. The series evolved to feature a range of American artists outside of Texas that covered a variety of music. As the popularity of the program grew, the music featured grew to encompass regional, national and international artists. Today, Austin City Limits focuses on a diverse range of song writers and artists from across the globe and spanning multiple genres. Austin City Limits has become television’s longest running concert series. The program is taped by PBS. Images of Austin TX are seen in the show’s opening credits. The stage features a skyline of Austin. The TV show has also inspired the Austin Music Festival, an annual music festival at the Parks in Austin.
During the 1970s and 1980s, the city experienced a sizeable boom in development that temporary put the brakes on the Savings and Loan crisis in the latter part of the 1980s. The growth led to an ongoing conflict of political interests between those who wanted to preserve the city’s character and those who wanted to develop Austin. A particular issue was the preservation of Barton Springs as well as the Edwards Aquifer. The issue of the Spring and the Aquifer influenced the larger battles.
In the 1990s, the boom continued with the growth of a large technology sector. At first, the tech industry was centered on larger, established corporations such as IBM. However, in the late 1990s, Austin garnered attention and the reputation as being a center of the dot-com boom and unfortunately, the resulting dot-com bust. Many smaller, startup tech companies made their homes in Austin and some of these would flourish and develop into successful companies while many others would fail before and during the bust period. Austin has also become known as a hub for game development, filmmaking and popular music. Austin hosts many large festivals and concerts each year. Events like the Austin City Limits festival and the South by Southwest Music/Film festival have continued to define Austin as a center for creative thought and artistic development.
The South by (SXSW) Southwest Music Festival is one of the largest music festivals in the United States. It began as a band festival in 1986 and was organized by 4 people: Louis Black, editor and co-founder of The Austin Chronicle, Chronicle publisher Nick Barbaro, booking agent Louis Meyers, and Rowland Stevenson. The organizers started it as a area event and expected about 150 attendees. The first year, however, over 700 people attended and the music festival took off. In 1994, the event added other media component and film, named the “SXSW Multimedia Conference.” In 1995, SXSW split those 2 components into separate events, and in 1999, Multimedia was renamed to SXSW Interactive.
During the festival, more than 1,900 performers play up to 100 venues around Austin over the course of a week in March. Although SXSW is an industry event, it links with events like the Music Awards and the Heart of Texas Festival. SXSW Movie has become one of the watched film festivals and it focuses on new directors and talents. SXSW Business Interactive attracts a big following within web entrepreneurs and creators. Its focus on technology has garnered the festival a large following as a place where ideas and technologies are formed and take off. Since 1987, the music portion of the event continues to grow from 800 registrants to around 12,000. SXSW Interactive and SXSW Film attract around 11,000 visitors to Austin annually. South by Southwest is a big revenue producing event for the economy, with an impact of at least one hundred million. The South by Southwest Festival has inspired other events elsewhere, including North by Northeast in Toronto, North by Northwest in Portland, OR and West by Southwest in Tucson, AZ.
