What's The Deal with SXSW's Artist Contract?
FutureBlog 2017-03-12
Summary:
by Kevin Erickson, National Organizing Director
One week before thousands of music/film/technology fans descend on Austin for the annual SXSW festival, controversy has erupted over provisions in the performance agreement required of all artists. On Thursday afternoon, musician Felix Walworth of the band Told Slant tweeted a screenshot of contractual language and the caption, “After looking through this contract sent to me by sxsw I have decided to cancel Told Slant’s performance at the festival.”
Walworth’s tweet quickly went viral, and since then, media outlets picked up the story, and an array of musicians (including some good friends of FMC) escalated the pressure with an open letter demanding that this language be dropped.
We’re still trying to make sense of this story, but here’s some questions and answers.