Last month, ATX Web Designs Founder Daniel Griggs was featured in a Forbes article titled How Tech Can Revolutionize The Music Industry During the Pandemic. ATX the Brand is based in Austin, Texas—the live music capital of the world and a burgeoning tech hub. The Forbes piece explains how the tech and music industries can join forces to help preserve arts and entertainment during a time of significant loss and change.
Here is an excerpt from the article:
One of the biggest lifestyle disruptions of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the loss of live music and entertainment. For an industry that relied heavily on ticket sales and sponsorships from live performances, the restrictions on large gatherings and congregating indoors were a heavy blow. Some venues and artists attempted to find loopholes or work around regulations by hosting socially distanced events, but the concert industry still forfeited more than $30 billion as a result of the pandemic. The BBC estimated that musicians lost two-thirds of their income in 2020.
Enter the techies. As the owner of a web design and digital marketing agency, I have seen the demand for web-based solutions and virtual alternatives explode during the Covid-19 pandemic. My company is based in Austin, Texas, which is both the “Live Music Capital” of the world and an emerging tech hot spot that has outranked Silicon Valley for the past two years. It logically follows that Austin would lead the way in discovering new ways to optimize the convergence of technology and live music.
Austin’s annual music festival, South by Southwest (SXSW), typically takes place in March, drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors from across the globe and generating more than $300 million in economic impact for the city of Austin. The festival was canceled in 2020 as a result of the pandemic but has reemerged in 2021 as a virtual event.
As a tech entrepreneur, I was excited about the possibilities of a digital SXSW experience, but as a music lover, I wanted something more. I was missing the raw, unfiltered, exciting nature of intimate live performances and underground events — that feeling of walking into a bar and discovering my new favorite local band or artist.
To read the full article on Forbes’ website, click here.