NEAR TRUTHS: INDEPENDENTS' DAY (PART 2)
Read Part One here.
A BIGGER, BETTER TRUCK: There has been a changing of the guard in Nashville over the past few years as women have taken top leadership roles at Universal (where the formidable Cindy Mabe has succeeded longtime chief Mike Dungan) and Warner (where Cris Lacy forms half of the new-school leadership tandem, with Ben Kline, that has followed Espo’s reign). It’s a far cry from the male-dominated Nashville scene of the past 40 years. We are also beginning to see some change in terms of roster diversity after decades of disproportionately white, male artists.
East and West Coast majors—determined to claim a piece of the country market—have often inked new acts and then found themselves unsure how to work them in the country ecosystem. The savvier players have forged label services-style deals with the Nashville companies that know how to navigate it—and control so much of the media within that ecosystem.
A great many of the new breakouts in country music aren’t coming from the Big 3 Nashville labels; to a surprising degree, quite a few of the most disruptive acts in the genre are coming either from partnerships between the majors and their Nashville counterparts (like Megan Moroney, a co-signing by Columbia and Randy Goodman’s Sony Music Nashville, who's scored a #1 radio hit) or between the coastal majors and indie companies (such as the alliance between Republic and Seth England’s Big Loud that has been the jet fuel for Morgan Wallen). Indie Big Loud also has acclaimed upstart HARDY, who's scored a big hit and lots of award hardware and is distributed via STEM.
UMG presently enjoys a 40.5 share of the country market in currents, while Sony has 25.2 and WMG 24. Republic—thanks to the unstoppable Wallen—has a 25 share of UMG’s 40. UMG Nashville has a 9.6, and Big Machine Label Group (distributed by UMG) has 3.2. Sony Nashville’s 16%, The Orchard’s 4.8 and Columbia’s 2.6 make up the bulk of SME’s slice of the country pie. Warner accounts for 15% of WMG’s 24.
Two of the year’s most significant country acts, Jelly Roll and Lainey Wilson, are part of Jon Loba’s indie Broken Bow stable.
The deal for big-streaming new arrival Zach Bryan was done on the West Coast at Warner Records, which has done a superb job of breaking him. Bryan is currently at 1.7m ATD U.S. and 1b global streams. Messrs. Bay-Schuck and Corson have also gotten some traction with country comer Warren Zeiders.
The inking of established country star and erstwhile free agent Miranda Lambert to Republic, on the other hand, indicates the gravitational pull of the coastal majors for high-profile Nashville artists. There’s much interest across the biz in the impact the Republic machine will have on Lambert’s brand.
It should also be noted that Country radio is not typically playing as significant a role in the genre’s biggest breakouts as it once did, though it’s still clearly a more vital part of its ecosystem than radio formats in other genres.
The indie trend in recent Nashville history, meanwhile, got its first big look since Mike Curb with Scott Borchetta, who, after tremendous success with his BMLG, is still considered an outlier by many more-traditional players in the Music Row game of thrones. Resentment of his success has run high, and this has been further aggravated by the Italian sports cars and private jets as Borchetta laughed all the way to the bank with that $300m check from Scooter Braun’s Ithaca.
All this fishing in Nashville’s stream has stoked some discontent among the Music City majors, who've had monopolistic control over the game for years by locking down Country radio. A narrative of coastal carpetbaggers and other upstarts encroaching on Music Row almost writes itself, and there has been some pushback. But the (very big) upside to the story is that country is finally a major player on the streaming charts, today’s only meaningful metric for recorded music.
RHYTHM & SEOUL: Complexities regarding distribution and the U.S. majors similar to those we recently discussed in the Latin world are naturally playing out in the K-pop market as distribution and label-services deals continue to take myriad hybrid forms.
Of particular note: the strong presence of both Republic (via JYP) and Interscope (BIGHIT) in the space with Ingrooves and/or Virgin. Capitol’s SM partnership, too, has yielded strong chart results, while Columbia has IVE and Warner has caught a hit with Attrakt’s FIFTY FIFTY on the heels of breakout aespa. Labels are also adding staffers with specific expertise in K-pop to help navigate this terrain.
The K-pop distribution model continues to throw off big D2C sales but not the streaming numbers that typically correspond to the kind of big chart showings they’ve had—the ATD of genre leaders BTS and BLACKPINK is a mere fraction of that generated by Swift, Wallen, Bunny and other chart-toppers. But the real prize is in those sold-out arena and stadium dates that have corralled a fervent fan base with a bigger taste for physical and merch than streaming.
Indeed, streaming accounts for a much smaller piece of the K-pop pie than in the rest of the marketplace, where this year’s ATD breaks 75%-25% in favor of streaming over retail. But K-pop acts generally split streaming and sales 50-50, and there is evidently some wild manipulation of sales activity by super fans, empowered by the corporate machinery in Seoul to boost artist brands and chart positions, thus ensuring continued heavy turnstile action at stadiums and arenas.
