It’s officially SXSW time. By now, tens of thousands of music-lovers and technology enthusiasts have descended upon Austin, Texas for a nine-day debauchery of beer, BBQ, dancing, and conversation.
If you aren’t fortunate enough to be there in person, you don’t necessarily have to miss out on all the fun. There’s an annual tradition of releasing the best music from SXSW through Bittorrent, and the 2017 version is available to download now.
These are all tracks available from the artist pages on SXSW’s website, and include literally everyone playing at the festival, aggregated into one (totally unofficial and unauthorized) bundle. This year there’s 1,201 tracks, weighing in at 7.86GB in total.
And if you want to check out older SXSW bundles (what, is 1,201 songs not enough for you?), these are all available on the SXSW Music Torrent website. The oldest one dates back to 2005. In total, there’s about 77GB of music to download, which is insane.
I first stumbled upon this as a teen, and although I haven’t downloaded it religiously every year, it has been responsible for me discovering some unique, interesting, and even dangerous artists. It’s a magical musical mystery tour that drags you out of your Spotify safe space, and introduces you to stuff you wouldn’t have listened to otherwise.
It’s the closest you’ll get to SXSW without standing in a block-long line for the restroom.
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