More than 60 years after Willie Nelson brought the hippies and the rednecks together at the Armadillo World Headquarters and helped forge Austin’s identity as the “Live Music Capital of the World,” the city continues to enjoy an outsized influence on the global music scene.

Maggie Phillips, music supervisor for Deep Cut Music, attributes this in part to Austin’s isolation, both geographically and economically, from the music industry hubs in New York, Los Angeles and Nashville.

“We don’t have the business influencing bands as much as we do on the coasts,” she said Saturday during a panel at the inaugural KUT Fest. “And because of that, I feel like the art, the music, that people make here is art for art’s sake and music for music’s sake, and it has a very DIY, punk attitude toward creating.”

As rising costs and massive growth change the city’s demographics, how Austin can continue to be a welcoming place for musicians — and keep them here — are becoming increasingly important questions for city leaders and people in the industry.

“I think our city is going through a bit of an identity crisis,” musician Alejandro Rose-Garcia, who goes by Shakey Graves, said, pointing to parallels in changes in the city and the music business. “All the arts are going through a bit of an identity crisis. When I was growing up, ‘selling out’ was a hill to die on. Now, that’s changed. The reality of the situation is that musicians can’t just sit back and play music all the time; you have to be a self-marketing machine.”

Preserving that rich history of creative freedom while navigating the new realities of making a living in the arts here is the mission of the city’s new Arts, Culture, Music, and Entertainment Department. Director Angela Means said she wants the city to be a conduit for artists to connect with the new businesses and industry moving to Austin.

To have an environment where creatives thrive, she said, there needs to be support systems for artists as well as collaboration with all of the parties who want to call Austin home.

While nobody in attendance was thrilled with the idea of a Tesla Stage at The Continental Club, the panelists all recognized the need for financial support for music to remain a fixture in Austin. Longtime Austin City Limits Executive Producer Terry Lickona tried to imagine ways these partnerships could work.

“I wouldn’t complain, say, if a local Austin-based startup tech company that was successful wanted to give back in a way by supporting the music scene by putting their name on a stage without messing with the creative side of things,” he said, “or taking away from the history or legacy of what was there to begin with.”

Means said the city recognizes the difficulty in managing corporate influence in creative spaces, but still believes it’s one of the best ways to protect the artists and venues that make Austin so unique.

“Where is that fine line, and is there a model that will work for Austin, Texas?” she asked. “It will absolutely have to include partnering with our business community to be sustainable.”

ROUND ROCK, Texas – Dell Technologies is looking to make some changes.

Its Board of Directors unanimously approved Monday to change the legal home of Dell Technologies from Delaware to Texas. The change is pending a vote by stockholders later this year.

What they’re saying:

According to a release, the redomestication would align Dell Technologies’ state of incorporation with its roots and long-standing center of operations.

The company was founded in Austin in 1984 and its global headquarters, chairman and chief executive officer, and the largest concentration of its U.S. workforce are all based in Texas.

“From my dorm room at the University of Texas in 1984 to our headquarters today in Round Rock, Texas has given Dell what every great company needs to grow — extraordinary talent, world-class research universities, and a business environment that lets us build for the long term,” said chairman and CEO Michael Dell in a release. “Texas is where Dell has innovated, expanded, and invested for more than four decades, and bringing our legal home to Texas reflects what we’ve been building here all along.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott celebrated the news on social media, saying: “Welcome home, @Dell. For over 40 years, Texas has been where @MichaelDell built and innovated. Now, Dell Technologies is bringing its legal home to Texas. This is what happens when job creators and innovators are welcomed, not punished. More businesses are sure to follow.”

What’s next:

The change, if approved by stockholders, will not affect business operations, management, strategy, assets or employee locations.

Stockholders will have a chance to vote on the redomestication at the 2026 annual meeting on June 25.

Dig deeper:

This move comes after Michael and Susan Dell became UT Austin’s first-ever billion-dollar supporters.

 The Dells announced a new investment in the university in late April, which represents one of the largest-ever philanthropic commitments to any U.S. university.

Dozens of data center projects have been proposed across Central Texas, and how those projects shape the region’s land, economy and water resources will depend on how local leaders plan for their arrival.

But there is no consensus about what approach to take even among business leaders, Denise Davis, the board chair for the Austin Chamber of Commerce, said at the inaugural KUT Festival on Saturday.

Davis said the Austin Chamber is still trying to find its footing in the debate.

“I get that everyone has phones, and the average home has 20 devices, and I get that AI is powering everything, but I also have businesses that need electricity, and I need the grid to be reliable,” Davis said. “So I think it’s to be determined where the chamber comes down on the issue.”

Davis was joined on stage by Bradley Dushkin, Round Rock’s director of planning and development services, Hays County Judge Ruben Becerra and Carrie D’Anna, a Taylor resident and community organizer.

Dushkin said data centers have the opportunity to provide cities relief in the form of “ginormous” property tax contributions as local politicians struggle to provide community services amid budget constraints.

“We have a need to bring in these high-dollar, revenue generating, non-residential properties into the city so that we can help bring in that money and not have to rely on the property taxes generated by the residential side,” Dushkin said. “Having those large commercial properties helps us subsidize the tax rate across the city and keep the tax rate low for our residents.”

Dushkin said Round Rock’s budget is already a reflection of how data centers could do the heavy lifting for a city’s bottom line: commercial buildings only make up 8% of taxable properties in Round Rock, yet they generate nearly half of the city’s property tax revenue.

But many worry data centers will suck up too much water and power to be worth their property tax contributions.

Becerra said there’s “no good option” for data centers in Hays County, where extreme drought threatens its future water supply.

“Some of these systems are asking for a million gallons [of water] a day,” he said. “You can want ski slopes in San Marcos, but if we don’t have the snow, it’s not going to do you any good.”

Across Hays and Williamson counties, community activists like D’Anna have effectively ended some data center projects over such water and electricity concerns.

D’Anna said she’s noticed data center projects “strategically” planned out of the public eye. She created a Facebook group to keep people informed about the BPP data center proposal in Taylor, and with the help of other plugged-in community members, passed out flyers protesting a data center development in Hutto.

D’Anna said people in her neighborhood are “terrified” of how data centers could reshape Taylor.

“People who are building data centers, union workers, electricians, they want to sign our petition because they see the value in guidelines,” D’Anna said. “They love the technology. We don’t like how it’s being capitalized. We don’t like how it’s replacing us.”