ABOUT
“Businesses covet the college demographic — for students by the students —that’s where it’s at in Austin. Everything vibes around what [college] students want.”
-Sascha Stone Guttfreund, Score More Productions founder
A grassroots movement, led by a collaboration of young Austinites and catalyzed by social media, is sweeping through the city’s underground music and art scene, bringing something that the “Live Music Capitol of the World” has never seen before.
Multiple production companies have launched, only within the last year, to collaborate and surge forward with a focus on marketing for the college-age demographic to bring in new artists and promote a more expansive live music scene. These companies have brought high-profile artists, some first time performers in Austin, and established certain downtown venues as centralized hang outs for the younger demographic.
John Kahn, a promoter from Dreamtime Productions, said the music scene in Austin is changing all the time. Dreamtime collaborates with at least two different production companies and numerous artists and musicians.
“I think it is changing all the time. I think people who have like minded hearts and minds will co-create,” Kahn said. “I know that we are open to working with any one if they have the passion and the intention to promote art…We just want to see smiles on everyone’s faces and the knowledge in their minds and hearts."
The movement, which essentially recruits talent and then markets to a college-age demographic has risen completely from the hard work of people in their early twenties, mostly students. Club and bar owners have begun to utilize these small-time production companies to enhance the evolving music scene.
“I am a big time advocate of collaboration. Why do it alone when you can be twice as successful by doing it together? That's been my attitude, and it's proven to work. We've rocked this town with some dope shows by partnering up on events together,” said Sascha Guttfreund, a communications sophmore at the University of Texas and founder of ScoreMore Productions.
While some students work in coffee shops and grocery stores to pay tuition and rent, Sascha has become the talent buyer for ACES Lounge and works with other student run production companies, essentially just to "keep the party going."
Holla At Cha Boy Productions seek crowds between 18 and 35, “who like to dance, hear news things, and support the next level of music creation.”
“Really a wild set of tastes the town has, which is incredible and what makes Austin special,” Mike Abb, one of the HCB founders, said. “I love it here for these reasons alone. People want to jam out — what could be better than that?”
Guttfreund, and the success of his company Score More Productions is just one example of a movement of young people, rising from the mist of 8 a.m. classes and midterms emerging to the dub-stepping, hip-hop beat of the Austin nightlife, bringing a new life and spirit to an underground audience.
“Ya’ll just wait, you ain’t seen nothing yet,” he said.