Appetite For Disruption

Indies Account for 38% of Country Music Top 100 Airplay Tracks for 2007

Taylor Swift.  Toby Keith.  Rascal Flatts.  Rodney Atkins.  Tracy Lawrence.  Tim McGraw.  Garth Brooks.  Trisha Yearwood.  Emerson Drive.  Jason Aldean.  Little Big Town.  Jack Ingram.

These are just a few of the artists who dominated Country radio in 2007.  Nielsen's year-end BDS chart for Country music airplay are out, and, by my count, independent labels (which does not mean these some of labels don't have distribution via major labels) account for 38% of the Top 100 Songs of the year.  That's got to be some kind of high-water mark in this era of major label consolidation.  Here's the label breakdown.  Here's the top artist breakdown.

I don't know if this is a tipping point for the rise to prominence of the indie label scene in Nashville, because a label's individual financial health and future is based on much more than radio airplay.  But it ought to be a signal that the major labels are not the only place to find talented, charismatic artists creating commercial art.

I don't have the countdown breakdown by music publisher, but so many indie publishers involved with country music are having incredible successes as well.

So are we in an era of de-consolidation?  Do artists, songwriters, and publishers feel encouraged?  Challenged?  Emboldened?  Insecure?  Please let me know your thoughts.

Take care.

Mining for gold with Midas

As I've written of recently, there are solutions for many brand that lie outside of the major labels when it comes to music.  The disruption at those major labels has given rise to start-up independent labels and DIY artists outside of the label system altogether.  In Nashville there is a set of indie labels that have had much success as the majors have retrenched and cut back on the number of artists on their rosters.

Why does your brand need to pay attention here?  Because these labels have each had runs of chart and sales success with artists and potentially don't have the high economic barriers to entry your brand might find in seeking to tie into major label artists.

For the record - I think corporate brands and country music fit extremely well together.  Most people can relate to country music because the artists and songwriters deliver content about the lives the majority of us lead: we work hard for our goals, raise real families with real problems, and often need to look outward for guidance and redmption. 

Let's take a look at one of these labels and see what brands have - and have not - done with artists on that label.  Midas Records has a couple of artists, Emerson Drive and Whiskey Falls, one which has launched and achieved chart-topping success at Country radio and received numerous nominations from the Academy of Country Music, and the other whose album has yet to launch.  Which artist do you think has gotten the love from corporate marketers?  If you guessed the hit artist you'd be wrong.

Emerson Drive just had the #1 Country Single in the nation - during the CMA Fan Fest, the industry's biggest live event!!!  So here is a band that has reached a milestone most acts would kill for.  They have a solid album.  This seems like a well-oiled machine a brand would want to leap into and take for a test drive, at the least.  Not yet.

Whiskey Falls is about to launch their new album on Midas and has gotten love from TV and corporate brands.  On the TV side, their song "I Can't Stop Loving You" garnered key placement in an episode of the NBC soap opera "Days of Our Lives."  Meanwhile, they scored both a placement and an appearance in a new national TV spot for auto repair chain AAMCO.

Did you know about these bands?  Emerson Drive has been around for a while.  They started out on Dreamworks Nashville a few years back.  This current album is their third release.  The point is to keep seeking out acts whose music and image suits your brand's needs and not necessarily accept star power as the currency your brand needs to be dealing in.