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.

There are a lot of posts out there looking back at different aspects of SXSW. On the fashion front, Rachel Arthur tries to pull out some trends in a guest point on The Business of Fashion.

She highlights the rise of 3D printing; the calls for greater contribution between disciplines citing panels from Lego, PepsiCo, and Frito-Lay; and probably the most interesting point for me, the move away from a focus on newly-created mobile apps to discussions around hardware (such as Google’s talking shoe).

Part of the beauty of SXSW is, of course, meeting up with digitally-minded people from across the sector. But, without doubt, the most powerful insights are gleaned by stepping outside the fashion bubble and learning from other industries. The challenge is being able to distill down the key takeaways.

You can read the full blog post over on BoF.

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.

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It’s your final night of SXSW and we really mean it this time, so Interactive badge holders can stop grumbling that it finished Tuesday (because it doesn’t). So a bit more flavour of the fun on offer at SXSW before we head out to Sixth for one last bag of memories

• Kii Arens (www.lalalandposters.com)
• Fredara Hadley (www.jooksi.com)
• ‘If Your Dad Doesn’t Have A Beard…’, by The Beards (www.thebeards.com.au)

Follow the SXSW Baby blog for more South by Southwest fun, and what we’re up to on the ground via Twitter and @SXSWbaby. Got news about SXSW for us? Get in touch via SXSW Baby’s contact form! Don’t forget to follow the podcast via the RSS feed!

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SXSW is all about worlds colliding, so when there’s a Turkish night of music at Cedar Street Courtyard, with a number of bands from one of my other lives (the Eurovision Song Contest), I’m going to talk to two bands more used to stadium rock than tiny gigs… and introduce my SXSW friends and followers to them!

• Mor Ve Otesi (www.morveotesi.com)
• maNga (www.manga.web.tr)
• The team from Ticketbud (www.ticketbud.com)

Follow the SXSW Baby blog for more South by Southwest fun, and what we’re up to on the ground via Twitter and @SXSWbaby. Got news about SXSW for us? Get in touch via SXSW Baby’s contact form! Don’t forget to follow the podcast via the RSS feed!

Something I’ve noticed at SXSW Music this year is the lack of merchandise on sale after a showcase. With over 2000 official performances, the people in the crowd are already invested in you. They’ve given up close to an hour of their time to listen to you. If they are up on their feet. cheering and applauding at the end of the gig… you’ve made the sale! You’ve got them! All you need to do is close the transaction and you have a fan for life!

Except in three nights of back to back showcases, only two artists I’ve seen have had CD’s on sale after the gig. When the short term musical memory is about to be over-written by the next band, it’s incredibly important to get a physical memory into the hands of your potential new fans.