Musician advocates decry city’s inaction on fair pay for SXSW performers

With South by Southwest set to kick off over the weekend, advocates for musicians are calling attention to what they say is inadequate progress on the issue of fair pay for official showcase performances during the festival. Those calls come as city leaders have taken no official action on the small policy recommendations supported by the Music Commission and Parks and Recreation Board to cease fee waivers that allow SXSW to use some city facilities, including Auditorium Shores, for free.

The United Musicians and Allied Workers, a union working toward equity in the music industry, plans to hold a rally for its cause next Friday outside the Austin Convention Center, in addition to its evening showcase on March 13 at Cheer Up Charlies.

The group’s demands are a flat fee of at least $750 paid to all performers including international acts, with an end of application fees for prospective festival acts and giving festival wristbands to all official showcasing performers.

Since first putting out a call for improved compensation ahead of the 2023 festival, there has been some movement. SXSW organizers announced over the summer they’d pay $350 for bands and $150 for solo/duo acts this year and would improve the credential package for artists to provide more career advancement opportunities.

Scott Strickland, a member of the Music Commission and working musician, said he and other commission members have been frustrated by the lack of city support on the SXSW pay issue. While the city has in recent years increased the pay for official city performances to $200 per musician, there has been a hands-off approach to the private company that plays a huge role in the local creative economy.

“I’ve repeatedly asked the mayor’s office: Has there been any consideration behind City Council with these two recommendations that have been passed to you guys? We had the parks board and the Music Commission both recommend the exact same thing, and City Council has not done anything,” he said, admitting that the cessation of fee waivers would be largely about public perception.

“What surprises me about the fact that they haven’t taken it up at all is it’s not something that’s going to really hurt them. These two recommendations that were passed, basically you’re firing a bullet at a runaway freight train. It’s about the symbolism of City Council and the mayor and the city manager standing with musicians.”

Advocates for SXSW performers said they’ve also been stymied in trying to have any dialogue with SXSW.

Hugh Forrest, SXSW’s co-president and chief programming officer, said there is “an ongoing discussion” within the company about the issue of artist pay. He said a gradual increase is the most likely path ahead, with he and other SXSW executives already planning to assess the pay for the 2025 festival after the 2024 edition concludes.

“While there were some contentious hearings here, we’re all fundamentally on the same page here. We understand the musicians are the lifeblood of the creative economy that has made Austin special and has made South by Southwest special. And we should be helping musicians create more opportunities where they can thrive and survive in Austin, period,” Forrest told the Austin Monitor in November when the company released its annual economic impact data.

“An incremental approach is probably the thing that works best for us, but we are also still recovering from the pandemic. I can’t emphasize enough that this is an extremely important issue. And again, we’re all generally on the same side here of wanting to figure out ways that we can be as helpful as possible to the creative community. We just can’t do it quite as quickly as some of them would like us to do it.”

Joey DeFrancesco, an organizer with UMAW, said his group has been repeatedly ignored by SXSW since the initial publicity push in 2023, with local government leaders remaining the best hope for advancing the discussion on artist compensation.

“Certainly we hope and wish the council will move faster, and we’ll be helping continue to build the pressure on that at this year’s festival … whether or not the council is involved or not,” he said. “There’s still definitely a role for city government, and we’re still hopeful that the City Council will take stronger action and stand up to South by Southwest in this case. Our pressure on that plus the passage of those (commission-level) resolutions resulted in the first pay raise South By has given artists in 15 years, though it’s still not enough.”

Pedro Villalobos, chair of the Parks and Recreation Board, said City Council and other local leaders have failed to take advantage of the attention on the artist pay issue and could have sent a message to SXSW and other private companies employing local artists.

“Nothing has really been done on South by Southwest’s side to make the situation where I think it should be. Again, you know, they’re a private corporation. I can’t tell them what to do. The city can’t tell them what to do. But we should be using the leverage that we have in regards to park usage and waiver fees in order to put some pressure to demand fair pay for these musicians.”

As an example of the importance of the public spotlight, Villalobos pointed to the attention generated last week by City Council considering and approving a resolution of support for private contractors working for Google who’d organized and been unsuccessful in their labor negotiations.

“It’s always good to amplify, to have the biggest voices amplifying a particular issue,” he said. “I believe the City Council is pro labor and pro workers. But I do think that it’s important for voices who are important in our community – and voices that have easy access to microphones in the sense of garnering people’s attention – should be using their voices to advocate for workers.”

Behind the scenes, local union leaders are continuing their outreach to past and current SXSW performers to rally support to a point that could force SXSW to recognize them as an organized labor group. Aaron Lack, president of Local 433 of the American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada, said the group will have to lean on federal labor laws heavily to gain any traction in Texas.

“It’s definitely fair to say that there’s an organizing campaign going on behind the scenes in a lot of ways amongst musicians, and that’s how it really has to happen. It has to be amongst musicians,” he said. “That’s what has to happen to really make progress in this situation that’s become so bad with this employer in the last 20 years or so.”

Photo made available through a Creative Commons license.

The Austin Monitor’s work is made possible by donations from the community. Though our reporting covers donors from time to time, we are careful to keep business and editorial efforts separate while maintaining transparency. A complete list of donors is available here, and our code of ethics is explained here.