Many music festivals have undergone reviews over the last year because of deaths. However while the fatalities at events such as Electric Zoo and Ultra were due to irresponsible drug and alcohol consumption, the four deaths that occurred at South by Southwest last year were because a drunk driver plowed his vehicle into a crowd while being chased by the police. Not the festival's fault, right? Still, the event hired consulting firm Populous to develop a report on the future of SXSW. Things aren't looking good. For one, the company suggests that South-By should consider switching locations to accommodate continued growth.
Among the ideas suggested by Populous, according to NME: "soft searching" of visitors for prohibited materials (security is more lax as SXSW occurs at a wide series of clubs, not a festival grounds per se), preventing buskers from playing within a "security zone" around the event's official hosts as well as banning unofficial music events in general from parking lots in the area.
The most shocking suggestion however was that Austin might not be suited to host SXSW much longer. It seems sacrilege for the festival to occur anywhere else but BizJournals.net's Chad Swiatecki may be correct when he suggests that organizers of SXSW will hold the report over the heads of Austin's City Council to make sure it gets what it wants. After all, the event brought an economic impact of $315 million to the city during 2014. For comparison, The Austin City Limits Festival "only" brought in $102 million in economic impact during 2012.
We wouldn't sweat it yet, Texas music fans. Expect South by Southwest to return to the same place next year.
UPDATE
South by Southwest reached out to Music Times with an official statement, including this, the most telling quote on the matter: "The populous report is in their expert assessment and position, not ours, and we agree with most of it, but not all of it. In our own statements we've been careful not to imply a threat to relocate SXSW, and we have also explicitly stated that this is not our position numerous times."
