Austin calls itself the 'Live Music Capital of the World' but venues keep closing, rents on 6th Street are impossible, and the scene increasingly feels like a tourist product. Is the music scene actually dying?
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Add your commentI saw a guy playing guitar in the Red River district last month for 11 people on a Friday night. He was incredible. He told me he's leaving for Houston at the end of the month because he can't afford rent here anymore. That's the whole story.
musician here: the money is at weddings and corporate events and private parties now. live venues in austin pay the same door deals they paid in 2009. rent is not 2009 prices. do the math on what that does to who stays in music
6th Street on a weekend is not a music venue it is a sensory experience designed to extract money from people in cowboy hats from Frisco. It serves a purpose. That purpose is not music.
There is still incredible music being made and played in Austin. The tragedy isn't that the scene is gone — it's that the city makes it harder every year for artists to survive long enough to contribute to it.
SXSW used to feel like the city celebrating its own music. Now it feels like a convention that happens to be in Austin. The relationship has completely inverted.
every city that gets famous for a music scene eventually destroys it through success. this is as old as cities. Austin is just living the Nashville arc 20 years later
The fact that we lost venues like Emo's (original location) and Headhunters and others should be treated as a civic emergency and instead it gets a small blog post and a RIP tweet and then nothing
Nashville at least leans into the commercialization and builds infrastructure around it. Austin keeps pretending it hasn't happened which might actually be worse.
The Continental Club is still there. Hole in the Wall is still there. Stubb's still does incredible outdoor shows. The scene is not dead, you just have to look past the bachelorette parties.
The 'Live Music Capital' title is now a marketing budget line item not a cultural description. Which is fine! Cities need marketing! But let's not confuse advertising with identity.
Austin should have a rent control program for venues the same way some cities protect historic buildings. Cultural infrastructure deserves protection. The free market will not save the honky-tonks.
I moved here from Nashville specifically because I thought Austin had more authenticity. Both cities are doing the same thing. There is no authentic city left. I have accepted this.
im in my 20s and austin nightlife is fine? theres stuff to do? i feel like this is older people mourning a thing i never got to have and now they're mad i don't miss it the same way
anyone know what the actual count of venues is now vs 2010? i've heard numbers ranging from 'basically the same' to 'down 40 percent' and I cannot find a straight answer
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