It has been exactly a month since I, along with the CJLO music team, returned from Austin, Texas for SXSW 2025. In that time, I have been trying to form my takeaways from this year’s festival, in a way that is more substantial than ‘Woo! Fun!’ I assume my job there (other than shaking hands with label reps) is to act as a bit of a trend correspondent. With that, here are some of my music director takeaways from this year’s SXSW.