Image courtesy of Flickr, Bill Ward's Brickpile

Are you bitter because all of your friends are going to SXSW and you, poor lamb, must remain at home? How are you ever to learn about music if not given the opportunity to load up on wristbands and beer and stagger through the zombified masses of Austin, clutching a free branded koozie in one hand, a non-caffeinated Sparks in the other? Well, take a look at what the tech deities hath wrought for you, unfortunate souls: Monstro SXSW.

Monstro is a social music service that allows you to listen to the tunes that your friends tweet about. The service also shows which bands are trending on Twitter, a functionality that has been baked into its Austin-tinged offering: Social Music Chart SXSW Edition, a web-based platform and Android app that lets you see and listen to bands that are trending on Twitter during the festival.

When you hit up the chart you’ll see three tabs: 1). Trending, 2). Daily, 3). SXSW. The “Trending” tab will reveal which bands are the most tweeted-about right now, “Daily” shows the most popular bands of the day and “SXSW” features the most popular bands of the entire festival. When you click on a tab, you can drill down even further by venue and genre, surfacing the most popular bands at Austin spots as well as filtering out all the acts that you just don’t care about.

Once you find a band you dig, you can then listen to their tunes on Rdio. And, if you’re lucky enough to be down in Austin (and sober enough to work a computer), you can also click on bands to find out when and where they’re playing in Texas.

See? Don’t you feel better now? You don’t need a peeling sunburn and a suitcase filled with sticky clothes to discover new bands! That reminds me — must go procure some sunscreen before heading down South (Sorry, dudes…).