Nearly every year at South by Southwest, through ingenuity and relentless promotion a tech company emerges from the crowded festival to claim an outsized share of the spotlight. Twitter's SXSW breakout in 2007 is probably the most obvious example.
It's tricky to forecast who's going to rise above the crowd as SXSW gets back to its in-person mania in March. But with a massive influx of venture capital money and a hearty dose of media interest, chances are good that this could be the year of NFTs — non-fungible tokens stored on a decentralized network. Owning one provides proof of authenticity of an asset, which might include images, video clips, music and more.
There are plenty of hints about the elevated roles of NFTs at this year's event.
You can scroll to the bottom of SXSW.com and see Blockchain Creative Labs, the NFT business created by Fox Entertainment and Bento Box Entertainment, listed as a major sponsor next to household names like White Claw, VW and Porsche. Or consider that this year Blockchain Creative Labs will be creating NFTs that could help generate revenue for music and film artists performing at the festival. And that's without getting into the dozens of NFT-related presentations, discussions and social meetups.
Perhaps the most obvious sign that NFTs are a big deal, and not just for techies: Longtime country superstar Dolly Parton is teaming up with Blockchain Creative Labs on a new album available as an NFT, a new book co-authored by celebrated writer James Patterson and a big headliner concert on March 18 — Parton's first-ever appearance at SXSW — that is almost certain to be one of the hottest attractions of the week-long conference and festival. Naturally, the concert will be live-streamed on the blockchain.
Attendees at the show and other concerts will get their own POAP. Yes, that's new to many of our vocabularies and it stands for Proof of Attendance Protocol, which is essentially a digital ticket stub that proves you were there in-person. It's yet another element of the NFT takeover of SXSW in 2022.
"We're going to see a ton of NFT companies and startups in Austin in March," Hugh Forrest, director of the SXSW Interactive festival, said during a recent presentation. "They have a lot of money. They're spending money. Every inch of concrete that can be sponsored is going to have an NFT company attached to it."
For Blockchain Creative Labs, which was formed roughly a year ago, it's a big investment and a major bet that it can help usher NFTs into the mainstream, which it has already started doing by minting digital assets tied to Fox's "The Masked Singer."
The company's CEO, Scott Greenberg, said going big with NFTs at SXSW made perfect sense.
"This is the future of media, the future of content distribution, the future of the relationship between creator and audience," he said of blockchain technology. "And so for us, there was no better place to have this conversation than SXSW."
Greenberg and Blockchain Creative Labs President Melody Hildebrandt said that while many techies at SXSW probably already have digital wallets and experience with cryptocurrencies and even NFTs, they expect many attendees will be learning about and experiencing digital assets for the first time.
So the company, which is taking over Trinity Hall for its promotions, speaker panels and experiences, plans to help set visitors up with digital wallets and begin collecting simple assets tied to SXSW events. The space will have a digital gallery, offering a surprise WWE NFT drop, animation art, NFT posters from films premiering at the festival and networking galore.
"Our goal is [for] everyone who walks through the door... to walk out the door with a crypto wallet installed and ready to participate in our decentralized activation that's happening in the rest of the week," Hildebrandt said.
There will also be a two minute data art installation called The Ledger that uses data from events and mints NFTs. So as each person claims an NFT, it will get streamed into the installation. It's doing similar things with music, allowing people to claim NFTs from SXSW shows.
The SXSW NFTs will be sold via a blockchain hosted by Eluvio in SXSW's GO mobile app.
"We really believe in bringing in Web3 technology to a more mainstream audience and think that the power of Fox (Nasdaq: FOX) is one way for us to make that technology more accessible to a broader audience than kind of the inside crew that is often in the NFT space," Hildebrandt said.
Whether attendees will pull out their phone in droves and fill up their digital wallets remains to be seen.
"Is that the biggest trend coming out of the events? I don't think so," said Forrest, SXSW Interactive's director. "I go back to the most basic thing. I think the trend that people are going to see and be reminded of is the power of face-to-face interactions and the power of creativity."
And whether NFTs are already becoming old school, at least among the fastest-moving tech trendsetters, is another open question.
Among the many NFT-related sessions is one called "Move over NFTs. Here come the DAOs." That refers to decentralized autonomous organizations, which are a Web3 way to finance major projects, and it features Elon Musk's brother Kimbal Musk.
