AUSTIN, Tex. – The music industry is in a perpetual panic and the world in general seems to be heading down the toilet, but the vibe at the South by Southwest festival has – will wonders never cease? – been as sunny and positive as ever this year.

Officially, registration for the music side of the festival was down a tad this year, while the stable film and surging “interactive” components took up the slack. The streets, however, were still a riot of errant noise and boozy misbehaviour – police estimates put the number of visitors in town for SXSW and Spring Break well in excess of 100,000 per day – Austin’s clubs and concert halls were bursting at the seams and there were a whopping 2,000 acts in town to play. So, you know, it’s doing all right.

Belts might be tightening around the globe, but they were definitely loosened a little during the five days that North America’s largest and most closely watched music festival blew into town. Free stuff was still abundant – you can’t turn a corner in Austin during SXSW without someone handing you a CD, a beer, a plate of grilled meat, a pack of smokes or a pair of flip-flops – and the innumerable satellite parties on the fringes of the actual festival have gotten utterly ridiculous in scale.

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