The "South By Southwest" festival now underway in Austin, Texas is about many things. Among them: Seeing some of the hottest new bands on the planet. But it's the record labels that often give bands the platform to be discovered by music fans. And yet as streaming services bring artists and their listeners ever closer together. What kind of future do record labels have? CGTN's Owen Fairclough reports.

Blushing, born and bred in Austin, the Texas home of SXSW and one of this year's headliners.

Two couples with a shared love of guitar drenched shoegaze and a healthy self-regard for band dynamics.

SXSW is an opportunity for bands like Blushing to reap the commercial rewards of global attention.

But streaming services have upended the business model for the music industry with Spotify and China's Tencent now multi-billion dollar publicly traded companies.

OWEN FAIRCLOUGH AUSTIN, TEXAS "Streaming accounted for three quarters of US music industry revenue last year. And Spotify has such reach it can offer bands the opportunity to sign with them directly and cut out the label, which would take a slice of royalties."

So would direct streaming better serve Blushing than looking for a label to release their debut album?

And while streaming is dominant, physical CDs and vinyl LPs generate slightly more revenue than digital downloads.

And that's an opportunity for smaller labels such as Austin Town Records, responsible for Blushing's early releases.

A labor of love whose true value is perhaps best measured on the faces of the fans.

Owen Fairclough, CGTN Austin, Texas.