State of the country music industry

[Miguel]

Some of this applies to the music industry overall.

Country radio DJs and station managers wrapped up their four-day annual convention here Friday, taking a sobering look at challenges facing an industry that serves as a key gatekeeper to Nashville’s chief cultural export.

...programmers said they’ve grown skeptical of major country music record labels’ efforts to interest them in hit songs that turn out to have little lasting value for their radio audiences.

“A large number of country hits aren’t on the charts six months later,” said Mike Preston, program director of country station KKWF in Seattle. True hit songs — singer Adele’s, for example — should have more lasting value than that, he said.

Acquiescing to requests by big record labels to play certain songs gets the songs to climb the charts because the ratings are based, in part, on the number of times songs get played on the radio. But that has ultimately made radio managers feel they’re being manipulated, programmers said.

The label pitches to radio often turn out to be more about choreographing a chart topper, rather than the reality of music that attracts and keeps fans, Adams said.

“It’s label manipulation,” Adams said. “It has no bearing on reality. People say if Artist X has a No. 1 song, that’s X amount more dollars they can charge on tour. That’s OK, but it has nothing to do with my station.”

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One in five country music fans never tune in to country radio stations, according to a research study released Wednesday afternoon at Country Radio Seminar, a four-day national gathering of music makers, players and radio industry executives in downtown Nashville.

Instead, self-described country music fans get their music from websites, their own collections stored on iPods or listening to other types of radio stations, the annual report on industry trends found.

...The study also identified a “twang” divide between hard-core country fans and others who like country but aren’t dedicated country radio listeners.

For example, nearly twice as many devoted country fans as casual country fans (77 percent versus 46 percent) liked Rodney Atkins, Josh Turner and Billy Currington – artists with a noticeable country twang to their singing. But artists such as Lady Antebellum, Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood don’t divide fans, earning equally high marks from both devoted and casual listeners.

Risky numbers: 65 percent of country music fans don’t pick a country radio station as their favorite for music or they don’t listen to radio at all.

Love the legends: Many casual fans still like older country tunes. One in six say that country music from the 60s and 70s is their favorite. These songs aren’t typically played on country radio today.

“I believe that we as an industry have really made a mistake in our conception of our own stations,” said Rosin. While many people don’t want to listen to classic country music, some still do, and “we’ve let them float away,” he said.

http://www.tennessean.com/article/201202...|FRONTPAGE