AUSTIN, TEXAS - You could hear the grumblings everywhere you went during the South by Southwest Music Conference: Record companies are in the toilet, music fans under age 25 don't know you're supposed to pay for music and the only albums that do sell are "American Idol"-ized fluff.

So why, then, did a record number Minnesota rock bands bother to make it to Austin this weekend to be a part of the music industry's biggest convention -- where the goal in past decades was to land the big record deal?

Turns out, many of the 30 or so Twin Cities acts that came to the 22nd annual installment of South by Southwest (SXSW) now see the industry's woes as an open window for independent musicians.

"I'm happy about the major labels going away -- all they've ever done is made empty promises over free lunch," said Minneapolis singer and pianist Mark Mallman, a SXSW vet who returned this year to promote his new band, Ruby Isle.

The music industry isn't doomed, Mallman said. Instead, "the power has diversified."

SXSW first-timers the Alarmists -- who weren't even awarded a sanctioned nighttime showcase in the festival -- took the power into their own hands and crashed the party. The rock quintet played a couple daytime shindigs and gave away CDs. (Forget selling them.)

"We're giving them out to important-looking people with (SXSW registration) badges -- and to pretty girls," Alarmists frontman Eric Lovold quipped Friday afternoon as he loaded up more of the sampler discs into his shoulder bag.

What was the band's aim this weekend? "To be able to play anywhere, anytime," Lovold said.

Instead of trying to impress record-company bigwigs, many musicians were seeking out the music-biz insiders with the clout and know-how to line up profitable tours.

"My only hope is that there will be some good booking agents in the audience," Darren Jackson said before Saturday night's showcase by his band/alter ego, Kid Dakota. "Getting a good agent is so important these days."

At an event dubbed the Minnesota Migration Party on Friday afternoon, eight Twin Cities acts banded together to raise the attention it takes to effectively hit the road, including the Doomtree rap crew, the Plastic Constellations, Chooglin' and Vampire Hands.

"For a band like us that's focused on touring, [SXSW] is kind of an essential stepping stone," said Vampire Hands singer and percussionist Colin Johnson. "It's a great way to meet booking people, bloggers, music editors, et cetera, from all over the country in a total drunken random mess -- when people are at their undeniable best."

Meet the bloggers

IODA, a new online music distribution site, was one of hundreds of new music-biz sites at SXSW claiming to have a remedy for the record industry's current plague, which include a 17 percent decline in album sales last year.

The biggest contenders hoping to join the ranks of iTunes and MySpace included iLike, Bebo, Last.fm and Sonicbids, all offering ways for artists to get their music heard by mass audiences -- and to maybe, just maybe, make some money off it. Many of these companies are starting to pay bands from advertising revenue when they post songs or videos for free on the sites.

"The more you're played, the more you get paid," Last.fm's head of Web production, Matthew Ogle, promised an all-ears crowd during a SXSW business panel.

Minnesota psychedelic folk-rockers Cloud Cult figured out how to sell their music digitally on their own site a couple years ago -- helped by the fact that frontman Craig Minowa is a Web programmer by day. Band manager Adrian Young says others should follow suit.

"Otherwise, you're losing 20-30 percent of what little money there is to be made to someone else," Young said as his band performed on a SXSW broadcast stage set up by Minnesota Public Radio's the Current (89.3 FM).

Cloud Cult returned to SXSW partly to attract attention from another new group of powerhouse online entities that weren't even around three or four years ago: music bloggers.

Websites such as PitchforkMedia, Stereogum and Brooklyn Vegan -- offering CD reviews and gossip bits written by nontraditional journalists -- have become influential tastemakers in the music industry. They helped make Eau Claire, Wis.-based songwriter Justin Vernon, aka Bon Iver, one of the hottest acts at the conference this year.

Writers for Minnesota's own fledgling music website, ReveilleMag.com, co-hosted another all-Minnesota party for SXSW attendees with bands including Romantica, Big Ditch Road and Cloud Cult.

One of the Minnesota acts to actually still have a big record contract at SXSW, singer/songwriter Mason Jennings, said he would be optimistic about the state of the music industry even if he wasn't now signed to Brushfire Records (No. 1 hitmaker Jack Johnson's label).

"There are lots of opportunities out there for independent musicians, but they have to have the right attitude and work hard," Jennings said before his first of three showcases Wednesday. "Anybody that's in it to become a millionaire probably doesn't have a prayer anymore."

Chris Riemenschneider • 612-673-4658