Austin City Limits Music Festival is one of the biggest moments of the year for the city of Austin, Texas. It attracts over 100 artists, 450,000 visitors, and approximately US$500 million to the city each year. It’s an event that celebrates Austin as the so-called “live music capital of the world.”

But, while the event is great for the city, it’s no longer a reflection of the thriving homegrown music scene. It has become a showcase of the international, not the local. The biggest acts in music and the biggest brands in marketing dominate the stages while local bands and brands are priced out and pushed aside.

Keeping it local

We believe local artists who daily maintain Austin’s title as the live music capital deserve a spotlight during the city’s shining moment. That’s why we created Austin City Sounds: to shine a spotlight on Austin artists while the global spotlight is shining on Austin. Austin City Sounds is a showcase of local music at a locally-owned venue, hosted by the Austin American-Statesman.

This year’s lineup consisted of Austin-based musicians, who were curated and selected by our very own Statesman music team and featured DJEYEQ, Moody Bank$, The Past Lives, and Superfonicos.

Between each set, our entertainment reporting team (Deborah Sengupta Stith, features editor; Mars Salazar, music reporter; and Ana Gutierrez, dining reporter) took the stage to share stories about our local music scene and to speak about how our coverage honours and celebrates local talent all year round.

We announced the event in our editorial section with an article by Stith, which discussed the event’s intent and spirit. From there, we launched a flurry of TikTok and Meta posts from a stable of local content creators, including ExploreATX_, QuehacerAustin, TrentonAcrey, and WhenWhereWhatAustin.

We deployed wheatpastings of the concert poster all across downtown Austin to increase reach and further brand the event as a homegrown, grassroots local show. We also held a sweepstakes, urging readers to RSVP and sign up for our free Festival Guide newsletter to be entered for a chance to win a set of gift cards to iconic local businesses.

Drawing a crowd

Attendance at the event surpassed our greatest expectations. On three separate moments during the evening, we filled the venue to capacity and had to ask guests to wait in line for entry. Overall, we had 375 guests attend the event at a venue with a capacity of 175.

But our work didn’t end when the last guest departed. Throughout the night, professional video crews captured concert footage and conducted interviews with artists and reporters.

We cut the footage into a spot that told the whole story of the event, from why it was created to how it benefits the local music community. This ad filled out our media plan for the remainder of the year and extended the brand activation well beyond a single moment.

In the end, Austin City Sounds was a great success. With it, we were able to enjoy a night of great music with 375 Austinites and share our commitment to consistent, in-depth coverage of local artists with hundreds of thousands of them.

The event and the promotion surrounding it generated 1.3 million impressions, 719,000 video views, and 43,000 social media interactions.

We are beyond proud of the event that we created, what it meant to the artistic community here, and what it communicated about our brand.

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