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" Earlier today Lady Gaga, Doritos, and South by Southwest made the surprise announcement that the Artpop diva will be making her first very appearance ever at the festival when it invades Austin next week. On March 13, Gaga will be playing Stubb&amp;#039;s BBQ, which, with a capacity of around 2,100, is one of the largest SXSW venues, but is just a fraction of the size of the arenas she normally plays. Stubb&amp;#039;s is a favorite spot for super-huge acts to make surprise-ish SXSW appearances. Metallica, for instance, played a Guitar Hero-sponsored set there in 2009 that has become legendary for how impossible it was to get into. Gaga&amp;#039;s set might manage to top it, though. In order to register for tickets you have to have a Music or Platinum badge or an artist or music festival wristband ($189 for the very limited number that will be available at walkup), meaning that anyone trying to do Austin on the cheap is out of luck. But credentials alone aren&amp;#039;t enough \u2014 hopefuls have to report to the Austin Convention Center during specified times to &amp;quot;be given a bold challenge&amp;quot; that they&amp;#039;ll have to accomplish in order to even be entered into a random drawing through which the actual tickets will be distributed.      From the look of things, the somewhat ominously vague &amp;quot;bold challenges&amp;quot; involve karaoke performances, outrageous costumes, and something menacingly named the Electric Chaircut Experience. All of them are intended to push participants out of their comfort zone, which synergizes nicely both with Doritos&amp;#039; bold-centric marketing and with Gaga&amp;#039;s anti-bullying, pro-empowerment Born This Way Foundation (which the event&amp;#039;s raising money for), although they also seem equally well-designed for generating acute public humiliation. (And, as Esquire&amp;#039;s own Andy Langer has pointed out, these stunts are far less productive than having people earn tickets for an ostensibly charitable event by actually doing charitable acts.) The big losers in the whole deal are the thousands of smaller acts playing SXSW for exposure that they arguably need more than a mega-star and her underperforming third album. SXSW still promotes itself to musicians as a way to get in front of the sort of industry professionals and music fanatics that careers are built on, but as it&amp;#039;s drawn increasingly large acts and corporate sponsors into its orbit, an increasingly large share of the festival&amp;#039;s hype \u2014 its unofficial currency \u2014 is being concentrated on people who don&amp;#039;t really need it. Playing SXSW lets Metallica and Lady Gaga pretend at being regular old working musicians at the expense of the actual regular old working musicians vying for the attention of industry types who are probably right now flexing their pull in order to secure a spot at what will most likely turn out to be next week&amp;#039;s most talked-about music event. Or maybe the big losers will be the people who brave the Electric Chaircut Experience. Only time will tell. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a27675/sxsw-doritos-lady-gaga-sponsorship/>