Today the Wall Street Journal reports on efforts by Swiss bankers UBS to attract a buyer for its mortgage portfolio. There's absolutely no intersection between this article and the SXSW festival, except, perhaps, that the big acts everyone looks to for the future come from Nothern Europe. At one point during the festival, however, I did notice a UBS building—quiet and closed, its three-key logo suggesting that the bank was very truly locked while the rest of downtown stayed open—and it got me thinking about the festival in (very rough) financial terms.

The UBS logo, you see, can often be spied at other sorts of art conferences. The bank is a major sponsor of Art Basel Miami Beach and has contributed to museums in advance of various major art exhibitions. The stakes at SXSW are significantly lower. Contemporary art is a commodity and its market has been buoyed lately by the hedge-fund managers who are the subject of so much financial distress right now. Whatever the market's future is, art is a luxury good associated with the best in luxury goods, as companies like BMW and Bulgari prove with ads and promotions at Art Basel.  

The corporate sponsors attracted by SXSW are, of course, not luxury goods but they are fashionable. The 1,700 bands that come to SXSW attract studio execs and fans but also corporate giveaways from companies like Levi's jeans and Dentyne gum—any company that hopes to find some purchase among the hippest tastemakers America can gather. Every energy drink that can be bought at a local convenience store, for example, has a prominent presence in the festival.

I figure that the festival itself must make a significant share of its money through corporate sponsorships. Badges cost an incredible amount of money—hundreds of dollars for a four-day music conference; wristbands, which offer somewhat less access, cost somewhat less. But those badges and wristbands come at the cost of keeping venue doors open for four days and nights at no cover (to conference attendees), and the number of venues involved is huge.

How anyone makes money at SXSW, in fact, seems up to question—in particular, the music industry. How much money is there to be made finding and signing acts in an environment that increasingly boosts touring and merchandise sales as a way for bands to support themselves and small labels—excluding the bloated majors? And at any show I saw, merch tables had very little presence. With as many acts as there are playing SXSW, it's possible to attend a full schedule of shows of bands whose stuff you already own.

As far as liquor and restaurant sales go, it seems like a wash: The event takes place during spring break, so festival-goers fill in for the displaced students downtown; locals stay far away from the madness. Hotel attendance is undoubtedly at its highest during Southby—but traffic is at its worst. The cleanup each morning is not unlike what's involved after a typical spring Saturday night, except that it happens many more times a week. Still, the tourist dollars must be appreciable, since the festival is only expanding: Film and Interactive SXSW are big and growing bigger.

It is definitely a great advertisement for Austin, a chance to show out-of-towners the Live Music Capital of the World. With home sales in Texas relatively protected from the real-estate crisis that has plagued other growth cities (like Phoenix, for example), there seems to be a clearer and presenter danger to Austin's lifestyle. It's a threat that longtime Austinites have always dreaded, voiced by the singular motto: "Keep Austin Weird."

It's those damn bohos. Luxury condominiums have sprouted all over Austin, a Texas city that is not alone in seeing growth despite recession. The growth is especially apparent around downtown. For example, right across the street from two great venues—Club deVille and the Mohawk, bars that hosted shows day and night throughout the festival—is a new five- or six-story condo building. The building is so close to the bars I can't imagine anyone but the deaf and the devoted would buy units—a buyer would have to be oblivious not to realize he was getting some of the loudest real estate available in town. It's not the only example, either.

It's the sort of development that SXSW augurs, augmented by real-estate refugees from more expensive coastal cities. Who knows whether it will continue to hold, but if it does, one wonders whether luxury condo ticket holders will for long tolerate the decibel-density culture of downtown Austin. Southby is interdependent on the live-music culture—I don't see the festival taking place every year if music doesn't happen every night in every bar. Austin will probably survive its own growth, which can't go on forever if other gentrifying cities have been any example. Whether Southby can afford the changes to the music industry seems much less certain.

As Austin changes, so will Southby. It's hard to say whether Southby is a strong enough tourist draw to also protect Austinite culture from the changes that take place the other 50 weeks out of the year.