Getting the most space on the marquee
One way to make sure that your band gets the most space on the marquee at SXSW is to have a really long band name. Some bands have done just that. Here's a histogram of the name length of the 1200 or so artists that are appearing at SXSW:
This histogram shows that the most frequent band name length is 11 characters, (the average is 12.9 characters) with some as short as 3 characters, but there are quite a few with lengths of 30 characters or more, with one topping out at 43 characters.
Here are the bands that are getting the most space on the marquee:
Jon Langford And The Pine Valley Cosmonauts
Johnny Goudie and The Little Champions
Samantha Crain & the Midnight Shivers
Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin
Solange and the Hadley Street Dreams
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
Hermano L backed by Ranking Soldiers
Danny And The Champions Of The World
I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness
Bryan Scary and The Shredding Tears
Steve Goldberg and the Arch Enemies
And here the bands that are getting the least space:
WAZ
XYX
TAT
Mom
Fun
fiN
CLP
Cla
CKY
Blu
Aun
Note to bands - when you are picking the name for your band, try googling for it first - it is going to be a lot easier for people to find you with a name like "Jon Langford And The Pine Valley Cosmonauts" than for a band with the name "fun"