[Now updated with new, working links to the .torrent files, and a new version of the 2006 cover art, one I like much better. Ed.]
SXSW (aka, South by Southwest) is a music, film, and interactive media festival held in March of every year in Austin, Texas. They draw hundreds of bands to play for a week in Austin, at just about every bar and venue available. But the best part is that the organizers offer up one track from just about every band, for download, free. Several hundred tracks of some of the newest, freshest, most interesting bands out there. (There seems to be a lot of thrash metal, too, but to each his own.)
I have downloaded these tracks (conveniently available via Bit Torrent1) every year since 2005, and I plan to continue doing so, even though weeding through them for the real gems takes a long time (and I'm a couple of years behind). But one thing that has always bothered me, and moreso with recent versions of iTunes, is that there's no cover art associated with the songs. SXSW doesn't offer any up (though that may change), and when I went looking online, I found just one: Ben Millett made a 600 x 600 pixel JPEG of the 2007 web site art that he uses as a cover. He generously let me have it, and after adding it to iTunes, I liked it so much I decided to make covers for the other years.
I did some Internets spelunking and found marketing pdf materials for previous years, with graphics I could slice and dice in Photoshop. I did not try to be too creative, as I was trying to fit with the identity already created for each year. The 2008 materials (yes, I know I'm early) were really easy to adapt. Ben did 2007, and 2006 was not that hard. 2005 was a real pain though, as the art is all horizontal and difficult to mush into a square. Still I managed something I am mostly pleased with.
I do encourage you to come up with your own. This seems like the sort of thing ripe for the Internet-o-sphere to tackle.
But for now, I present to you, for your downloading pleasure, cover art for the SXSW Showcasing Artists for the years 2005-2008.
Click on each for the 600 x 600 pixel version.
- Updated! Here are the music torrents for your downloading pleasure. The links had changed from their original locations, but I've hunted down the right links. You still need a Bit Torrent client: Wired suggests the original BitTorrent client for new users.
- 2005: full song torrent (2.6 GB) and new songs update (85 MB)
- 2006: Release 1 (719 mp3s) and Release 2 (229 mp3s)
- 2007: Release 1 (3.1 GB, 739 mp3s)
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This design looks much cleaner to me. The current post now looks more like one of the family. Good work. I'll wait for Denny to post before I give final approval.
On topic: I never cared about album art before I got the Apple TV, but it makes a cool screen saver out of all the album art in the iTunes library, so I have a new appreciation for these files. I really like what you've done. You have a good sensibility.
Thanks to yours and Denny's comments, I did make a few changes for the better. I think this is the end of changes for a while. A couple of other sites need the attention right now.
As for the album cover art, I barely made any creative decisions at all. The colors, letterforms, graphics, all came from the SXSW materials. I just put them in a square format.
Okay, that said, I did just upload a new version of the 2006 cover. I looked back at the original PDF, and thought I'd try to match the layout a little more. The result is much more pleasing to me.
Thanks for doing this!!
http://twitter.com/rhh/statuses/751329432 ;)
But of course. Let me know if you find any others!
Thanks for the 2008 art. It's too bad there isn't an official torrent download.
Is it still possible that they'd put it up during or after the festival?
Linked by: SXSW 2008 « b&k m online on Mar 13, 08