Everyone is still looking back at SXSW, and deciding their personal highlights. I’m sure we’ll get to the Baby! team’s memories in the near future, but for now… how about the best guitar moments at SXSW Music?

It’s worth repeating that yes, it is actually possible to see bands play non-stop and around the clock for the entire week of SXSW. Perhaps not if you wanted to emerge with your feet, liver, ears, and brain intact, but you could do it. Or, you can remain unscathed, save your health, and just read about eight of the best players we saw this year.

But which eight are they? Find out at Premier Guitar (but we’re glad to see Marnie Stern is on the list).

A quick heads up during the holiday weekend, but NPR’s 100 Bands from SXSW collection remains free to downlaod, but you only have until April 4th to grab the archive file with all the MP3′s in it.

Handpicked from among thousands of artists, this genre-traversing playlist picks highlights, discoveries and future thrills from this year’s festival — and, for the next 30 days, it’s available for free download in its entirety, as one 813 MB zip file, right here. Of course, for those without that much hard-drive space, you can download each song individually, as well as stream The Austin 100 on this page and through NPR Music’s various mobile devices.

You can get your copy on this page.

Looking behind the scenes at SXSW Music isn’t that difficult, everything is on show at changeover time, sound-checks and band prep are done on stage, and the whole environment is incredibly honest. But there’s a lot more going on. Conrad Schoenleber talks through his experiences of organising the CrowdNoize showcase last week on City Pages.

12 p.m.: Our first act, locals, the Chalice, is supposed to go on. Half of our speakers are missing, and the sound guy couldn’t be more clueless. My partner, Patrick Welby of CrowdNoize calls his in-house sound tech to sprint over. He arrives and immediately starts working damage control. So far our SXSW showcase is a huge success.

The diary for the rest of the day is online, and makes for fascinating reading.

There’s just over a week to SXSW Music (and even less time for Interactive and Film), but if you’re all set to play, and not done anything else about your showcase, Clyde Smith has some advice on Hypebot for those of you who’ve been putting it off. The headline topics are:

• Contact Your Hometown Media
• Prepare A Video Shoot of Your Show
• Organize Your Social Media Presence Beforehand

As SXSW draws ever closer, it’s time once more the SXSW Baby team to release our music sampler track into the wild.

With over 2,000 bands performing at SXSW Music this year (and countless more that don’t have official showcases), choosing the bands to go and see is always tricky. With the internet, YouTube, Spotify, and other internet services, it’s a lot easier to get a feel ahead of time of the bands to watch out for, be it four names out of a hat on a short news article, right up to the six month listening marathon that is Operation Every Band from friend of SXSW Baby! Kevin McStravick.

Kevin has been highlighting some of his favourites every week, but we’ve got our own tradition at the Baby… our sampler collection of the tracks, bands, singers (and poets) that have caught our ears as we get ready to hit Sixth Street’s sound explosion (Even though we realise that .mp3 is decidedly old school in 2013). Here it is, eighty acts you really must listen to at this year’s South by Southwest music.

DOWNLOAD the SXSW Baby! “Best of SXSW 2013″ sampler
Mega.co.nz link (314 Mb)

A little bit about the process. Through Kevin’s listening via OEB we get our initial “long list” of acts to listen to. Into that mix the SXSW Baby! team threw in the music we’ve been discovering along the way. We also asked a number of our friends in the music industry to suggest a few names as well.

From then it was a matter of listening to them all again, debating favourites, comparing a few songs that were incredibly similar in head-to-head decisions, and once we had a provisional list, any new song that demanded to be included had to bump an existing song out of the playlist.

After all that, we’re left with 80 tracks (all of which are freely available to listen to online folks, we’ve just got them in one place), and a big jigsaw to get a great running order. As previous years, I wanted to create some great moments when listening to the songs, to have the music flow into each other, to have sequences that would allow you to both dip in and out of the sampler, or stick it on a five hour playlist (which should just about reach from the TSA screening at your local airport to the reception desk of your hotel – or twice through if you’re flying from Europe).

If the eighty tracks feels too much for you, then you can break it down to eight ten-track playlists.

• This is SXSW (Tracks 1-10)
• A little bit of Rock with your Roll? (Tracks 11-20)
• The British Sound Invasion (Tracks 21-30)
• We have both kinds of music (Tracks 31-40)
• Time And Relative Dimensions in Song (Tracks 41-50)
• This Land Is Your Land (Tracks 51-60)
• Love Shine A Light (Tracks 61-70)
• A tear, Sarah Jane? (Tracks 71-80)

If you’re not sure, here’s the deal. Listen to the first ten tracks. I’m confident that not only will this give you a great hit of SXSW Music, but you’ll want to listen to the rest of the sampler.

Oh and the 2013 bands in full?

A Band Of Bitches, Asgeir Trausti, Bernhoft, Bhi Bhiman, Black Pistol Fire, Boy, Chappo, Clairy Browne and The Bangin’ Rackettes, Conveyor, Current Swell, Delta Rae, Desert Noises, Diego Garcia, Diplomats of Solid Sound, Ed Harcourt, Elle King, Everything Everything, Fallulah, Five Mile Town, Fort Lean, Foxygen, Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls, Frightened Rabbit, Houndmouth, Jack Savoretti, Jake Bugg, Jamie N Commons, Jenn Grant, Jenny Owen Youngs, John Cooper Clarke, John Hiatt, Jonathan Boulet, Kid Congo & Pink Monkey Birds, Kim Janssen, Let’s Buy Happiness, Lions In The Street, Little Green Cars, Los Lonely Boys, Luke Sital-Singh, maNga, Meligrove Band, Mister Loveless, Mor Ve Otesi, Ms Mr, Night Beds, Ok Sweetheart, Pacific Air, Palma Violets, Peace, Quiet Company, Pockey LaFarge & The South City Three, Rah Rah, Ravens and Chimes, Rebel MC aka Congo Natty, Reptar, Roadkill Ghost Choir, Rosco Bandana, Royal Teeth, Ruby Jane, Sammy Decoster, Sarah Jaffe, Seth Sentry, Sizarr, Star & Micey, Svavar Knútur, Swear and Shake, Synthesizers, Tamikrest, The Chicharones, The Crookes, The Heavy, The Little Ones, The Mowglis, The Rubens, The Staves, Tim Easton, Tom Odell, Whitehorse, Wildlife Control, and Will Brennan.

“The biggest problem in the 21st century is not piracy but obscurity”, Cory Doctorow.

Music Schedule, which means the Operation Every Band crew is hard at work digging through numbers to figure out the best showcases night by night.

While searching and typing, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that the overall quality of artists this year is the best I’ve seen since starting this project informally four years ago.  Even last year, there would be review runs with little to nothing drawing any real interest for bands on end, but that truly isn’t the case this year.  ”Lo Fi” has taken a backseat this year to make way for clean and accessible production, a result both on changing tides in the indie music landscape and the increasing ability to record solid tracks with little more than a laptop, a microphone and a mind for inventiveness.

This communal discovery going on to incorporate hooky pop tones into all sorts of genres, from electronic experimentations to Americana roots rock, is a wellspring of sonic opportunity.  Creativity without creating distance between band and audience, this trend should make for an exciting 2013.  The great thing about accessible pop/rock music is that it translates wonderfully to the stage, so look for an overflow of highlights pouring out of SXSW come March.

Speaking of highlights, I’ve queued up some tops of the pops recommendations for the SXSW Baby readers, ranging all across the sonic spectrum.  Be on the lookout for waves of day show announcements and more showcases throughout the next couple weeks, so now is the perfect time to get your artist research in.

(more…)

Missed the badge cut-off on Friday? Don’t feel like spending over $600 to do SXSW this year? Arun Sood has some advice on doing the Austin spectacular on a tight budget:

A few more free drinks later, I vaguely remember stumbling out of The Parish, naively raving to my friend – an SXSW veteran – about the free booze and food, and the high calibre of musical acts. It was then she let me in on the secret: “Just stick to all the unofficial parties and screw paying for tickets – hardly anyone in Austin does.” And so my week of complimentary hedonism began.

…Tweets and posts begin pinging back and forth in the weeks leading up to most of the free shows, generating a buzz on influential music blogs such as do152.com. Websites such as showlistaustin.com and Facebook groups such as Unofficial SXSW Guide and the SXSWPartyList focus on listing the unofficial events.

Head Over to The Guardian for more tip and tricks, and feel free to share your own in the comments!