As best as I have been able to tell, Austin venues and musicians and crew have received about $5 million in aid over the year. The last study I could find was from 2015 and showed music had a $1.8 billion impact here. So the relief funding is .28% of that (out of date) impact.

That economic impact report understandably only focused on measurable impact from things like SXSW, ACL, shows, studios, etc. There’s no telling what the true truth economic impact of music is in Austin since so much of our tourism and cultural identity is wrapped up in it

There is a sense in the music industry here that we are about to undergo a mass exodus, if we haven’t already. Everyone in Austin music that I have spoken to has discussed how they feel completely abandoned by the city even as the city pretends music is still important to it.

And yet the city is continuing forward with things like the convention center expansion, which will ultimately cost more than a billion dollars and already has a reserve fund of $230 million or so, which they refuse to turn over to relief aid https://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2020/09/convention-center-expansion-moves-forward/

Convention center business across the country was down even before the pandemic and it seems unlikely that there will be much, if any, major convention business in Austin any time soon, especially since SXSW has already announced they will be digital only this year.

Meanwhile the bulk of music funding in Austin that is available comes from the Hotel Occupancy Tax, which was relatively stable when we had constant tourism but is obviously suffering now that the pandemic has brought tourism and convention business to a halt.

If musicians were to organize and escalate pressure on the city, I think we could force them to release the convention center expansion reserve fund (or at least a portion of it) for relief aid, particularly since it is music that made that convention business a draw here at all

I think you can easily make the argument that the convention center would never have grown, let alone grown at a rate requiring billion dollar expansions, had it not been for SXSW. Our music culture built the interest that brought businesses to that space.