"No matter what happens, people are going to still want to make music, and people are still going to want to hear music," Billy Bragg said in a Friday afternoon showcase at Club 115. SXSW's way-more-than-all-you-can-eat-smorgasbord makes that abundantly clear. The festival is like the physical manifestation of the digital media glut: 40,000 songs on your iPod, but you can't possibly make the time to listen to them all.
And the question haunting all the music being made at SXSW - and the one being discussed Friday at the Convention Center called "Mobility, Ubiquity and Monetizing Music" - was how the people making it are going to get paid, when there's so much of it available for free all over the Internet. The answer, everybody hopes - but no one knows for sure - will be some combination of touring revenues, corporate sponsorship, licensing fees, maybe a monthly music fee subscription model - none of of which is likely to make many bands rich. But they might, at least, get to have a career like Bragg, whose Mr. Love And Justice comes out April 22, and who's been able "to do what I always wanted to do, and love to do, for the last 25 years." That is, make music and earn a living doing it.
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