Austin's City Council officially declared it "the Live Music Capital of the World" on August 29, 1991, after the Music Commission compared venues-per-capita against other cities and decided the claim was defensible. The title stuck, and it is real: Austin's music industry generates roughly $1.8 billion a year, and SXSW alone brought $377 million into the local economy in 2024. Twenty miles northeast, in Taylor, Samsung is building a semiconductor fab it has already committed $17 billion to -- part of a company that has invested $18 billion into its Austin-area operations since breaking ground in 1996, with more than $37 billion in total investment now planned and over 15,000 jobs attached. One company's capital commitment to one facility outscales the city's entire music economy by an order of magnitude, in a metro area nicknamed "Silicon Hills" by people in the industry, a name most visitors to Austin never hear once.