It was just over seven years ago that a radio consultant named Keith
Hill took the issue of the lack of women on country radio, and sent it
into hyperdrive. Later dubbed TomatoGate, Keith Hill said in an
interview with the country radio trade periodical Country Aircheck, “If you want to make ratings in country radio, take females out … Trust
me, I play great female records and we’ve got some right now; they’re
just not the lettuce in our salad. The lettuce is Luke Bryan and Blake
Shelton, Keith Urban and artists like that. The tomatoes of the salad
are the females.”
Keith Hill went on to say about mainstream country radio, “We’re principally a male format with a smaller female component…” and “The
reason is mainstream country radio generates more quarter hours from
female listeners at the rate of 70 to 75%, and women like male artists.”
Keith
Hill’s quotes validated the growing concern at the time for the
systemic elimination of women on the country radio format, and lit a
fire behind an already burning concern that country radio was falling
short on representing women in an equitable manner compared to their
male counterparts—a problem that was exacerbated by multiple trends at
the time, especially the rise of Bro-Country.
Before TomatoGate
and most certainly after, countless initiatives were launched to try and
return some semblance of gender balance to mainstream country radio.
Many articles were written, organizations were formed, initiatives were
enacted to support women in country music, many of which are still
ongoing today. And what has been the result? Marginal gains at best.
Here seven years after TomatoGate, women still only make up roughly 10%
of mainstream country radio playlists, which is just slightly higher
than it was in 2015 when it was about 8%. In other words, despite the
incredible effort to make mainstream country radio an equal playing
field for women, virtually nothing has changed.
Also in 2015,
another parallel concern about mainstream country radio was smoldering.
Many independent country artists and their fans felt they were being
excluded from country radio too, despite a swelling interest in certain
artists. The lack of women on country radio dovetailed with the concerns
many in independent country also felt at the time. A few months before
TomatoGate in 2015, the CEO of Sony Nashville at the time, Gary Overton,
made his own controversial statements, saying in part, “If you’re not on country radio, you don’t exist,” emphasizing just how important country radio was to making or breaking a country artist.
Gary
Overton’s comments came just a week after the band Blackberry Smoke
became the first independent act in the modern era to notch a #1 album
on the Billboard Country Albums chart with their release Holding All The Roses. The very next week—and on the same week Gary Overton made his statements—Aaron Watson also notched a #1 album in country with The Underdog.
Neither artist had received any significant mainstream country radio
play, but they still were able to land #1 albums due to large fan bases
rivaling or surpassing some of the up-and-comers in the mainstream that
did enjoy mainstream radio support.
Soon Jason Isbell, Sturgill
Simpson, Whiskey Myers, and Tyler Childers would also land #1 country
albums, upstaging the mainstream’s dominance on the genre. With strong
grassroots networks—including independent media, social media,
festivals, touring circuits, and independent/locally-owned radio
irrespective of mainstream country channels—they were able to rival, and
sometimes surpass mainstream radio-supported artists.
The song
“Feathered Indians” by Tyler Childers being Certified Gold by the RIAA
in February of 2020 was another significant step forward for non
radio-supported music. Once again reshaping the paradigm in the modern
era, it opened the floodgates for independent artists receiving
commercial recognition, with Childers eventually earning multiple Gold,
Platinum, and now even Double Platinum singles, Cody Jinks and Whiskey
Myers also earning multiple Platinum singles, as well as artists such as
Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson, The Avett Brothers, The Josh Abbott
Band, even Wheeler Walker Jr. earning Gold Certifications. Where a #1
album on the Billboard charts could simply be the result of the luck of
the draw on a weak release week, the RIAA certs codified the broad and
burgeoning commercial prowess of independent music.
It was a
tale of two outcomes from two separate approaches to how to deal with
country radio’s insular and restrictive environment. Where the effort to
support women in country focused on activism, media advocacy,
organization building, all with the purpose of challenging the status
quo and returning women to country radio, the independent side of
country music looked to circumvent mainstream country radio entirely and
focus on touring, grassroots network building, independent festival and
venue circuits, video channels like GemsOnVHS and Western AF, streaming
playlists, as well as Texas Regional Radio, Americana radio, and other
independent radio outlets outside of the Music Row influence.
In
2015, we couldn’t imagine artists not supported by mainstream country
radio selling out arenas, and minting multiple Platinum singles without
the help of Music Row. Here in 2022, Tyler Childers is considered one of
the top artists in the entire country music industry, based off the
continued success of his 2017 album Purgatory, which continues
to receive some 7 million streams per week, and is perennially in the
Billboard Country Albums chart. Childers just recently celebrated Purgatory spending 100 weeks on the Billboard 200.
And
now we have Zach Bryan, who has well passed all his predecessors as a
non radio-supported artist upstaging the mainstream. After the release
of his double album American Heartbreak, he’s arguably the #3
most popular artist in all of country music, just slightly behind Morgan
Wallen and Luke Combs. Released on May 20th, American Heartbreak
continues to occupy one of the Top 3 spots on the Billboard Country
Albums chart, while Zach’s single “Something in the Orange” continues to
be one of the most streamed songs in 2022—again, without even a
semblance of support from mainstream country radio.
Meanwhile,
as stated before, women and their representation on corporate country
radio are in virtually the same spots that they were in 2015. That
doesn’t mean there aren’t mainstream country women that have found
success during this era. Carly Pearce and Lainey Wilson have both
launched promising careers over the last few years, and have actually
found decent support from country radio.
But the big question is
why is anyone expending significant effort to diversify country radio
when the format has clearly signaled for the last seven years and more
that it has no interest in being assuaged from its current practices,
and independent artists have proven time and time again that you don’t
need radio to find success?
And this phenomenon is not
restricted just to independent male artists. Kacey Musgraves became a
bonafide superstar with her 2018 album Golden Hour. Though many
of the media accounts at the time questioned why Kacey Musgraves
received so little radio support for an album that went on to win the
CMA, ACM, Grammy Country album, and Grammy all-genre Album of the
Year—a.k.a. The Superfecta for a country release—in truth it was Kacey’s
strategy from the beginning to circumvent country radio, spend the
money that would have been used to promote radio singles that were
likely to fail anyway on videos and alternative avenues of
promotion—including leveraging Musgraves’ favorable standing in the
press to her advantage—and find success without the country radio
format.
Golden Hour ended up going Platinum, and Kacey
Musgraves forged the greatest moment of her career by giving country
radio the side step. Of course, this strategy was forged due to how
unlikely it was that Musgraves would have any success at radio in the
first place. But Kacey Musgraves and Golden Hour is a perfect
illustration of how an alternative strategy to country radio can be more
advantageous than trying to court the categorically unfair and
restrictive format.
But still, the media and certain activists
continue to try and push this idea similar to the one Sony Nashville CEO
Gary Overton asserted back in 2015, “If you’re not on country radio, you don’t exist.”
In a recent article in The New Yorker focusing on country artist Hailey Whitters, the sub-headline reads, “Hailey Whitters has won critical acclaim and fans on the Internet. But radio still determines who gets to be a star.”
But this assertion by the New Yorker
(and others) is patently false. Nobody would claim that Kacey Musgraves
is not a star. She most certainly is. So is Zach Bryan, Tyler Childers,
and other artists well outside of mainstream country radio’s purview.
This is verified by streaming and sales numbers that rival or surpass
many other artists that have received mainstream country radio play. The
tour numbers for these independent artists also rival or surpass
radio-supported artists in certain circumstances.
Furthermore,
claiming that radio is the only avenue to success in country music is
dangerous because it can become a self-fulfilling prophesy, especially
for females in the country format who are being told they’re doing
everything perfect, it’s just country music’s radio gatekeepers are
keeping them out, as opposed to presenting them with alternatives that
have been successful for now scores of country artists that nobody would
question calling “stars,” while many artists have forged sustainable
careers with more creative control over their music irrespective of
mainstream country radio and its whims.
There is also an ugly
result in discounting artists as inferior and unsuccessful just because
they’re not receiving mainstream radio play, major awards, or other
mainstream recognition, like an artist such as Hailey Whitters hasn’t
put together a successful career, when if you judge it from a wider
perspective, she most certainly has. With the way the independent side
of not just country music, but all of music continues to accrue market
share, there is no reason to consider artists not receiving radio play,
or not signed to a major label as others, especially when critical acclaim commonly outpaces their mainstream counterparts, and sometimes commercial success does too.
There
is another issue facing the ability to increase the representation of
women on country radio and elsewhere that is rarely addressed in
conjunction with this issue: inventory. Women only make up about 16% of the population
of country artists, and tend to be less prolific than their male
counterparts, meaning there’s less singles to play on radio, or to
playlist on Spotify, and less women to put on a festival lineup. That is
why development of up-and-coming women needs to be an imperative of the
solution. But often up-and-coming country women are overshadowed by the
outsized attention flowing to mainstream artists such as Kacey
Musgraves and Maren Morris from the media because their careers are
considered more important since they are part of the mainstream. This
issue was underscored recently when the team for Maren Morris indirectly cancelled a performance by up-and-coming artist Paige Davis in New Hampshire due to Maren’s “no local openers” clause.
Of
course country radio is closed-minded, corrupt, sexist, and completely
unfair. But for well over seven years, those looking to return some
semblance of fairness to the format for women and everyone else have not
only failed demonstrably, they have failed in part because they fail to
recognize or address the underlying economic incentives and realities
country radio has to maintaining the status quo, including some that
Keith Hill cited. Advocates for change at country radio also regularly
fail to recognize how it’s country music’s major labels and their
regional representatives that continue to be the most influential voice
in the format, not the radio stations, or even local and regional
program directors themselves.
There seems to be this idea that
women, as well as LGBT, and Black and Brown artists are being actively
excluded from country radio under some sort of politically-driven
conspiracy against them perpetrated by “gatekeepers.” But country radio
would play Klezmer music on repeat if it felt that is what would make
them the most money. It would play all women if it felt it was in its
economic interests. It’s all a money game. Country radio is exclusively a
commercial enterprise, and country singles are simply the incentive to
get mainstream consumers to interface with advertising for corporate
beer, full size pickup trucks, and mainstream country concerts
underwritten by major labels and mega promoters such as LiveNation.
The
reason academics and journalists believe there are political or
exclusionary motivations behind the demographics of country radio is
because they are politically motivated and driven by identitarian
ideologies themselves. But corporate country radio is run by empty
suits, pouring over data telling them what to play, and beholden to
their major label task masters who are their biggest advertisers.
This
is also the reason that using mainstream country radio studies culled
from corporate playlists to attempt to represent the overall
demographics of country music is inherently flawed. This demographic work
by Canadian academic Jada E. Watson has been cited in countless think
pieces, news stories, and other studies to highlight the lack of women
and diversity on country radio, and fairly so. But these same radio
studies have also been used to attempt to represent the populous of the
entire country genre, once again under the premise “If you’re not on radio, you don’t exist.” This categorically obfuscates the true demographics of the country music community, and often for ulterior purposes.
Similar
to saying radio play is imperative to the success of an artist’s
career, it is exclusionary and irresponsible to independent country
artists, alt-country artist, and the vast and omnivorous community of
artists in the Americana realm—many of whom deserve to be considered
“country” more than many of their major label, radio-supported
counterparts—to exclude them from the community of artists that should
be considered “country” just because they’re not on the radio. These
artists collectively generate significant amounts of economic activity,
and make up the vast majority of the artist population, while performers
receiving radio play represent a tiny fraction of country’s artist
population—likely less than 1%.
But organizations like the Black Music Action Coalition
have recently used these mainstream country radio studies to
misrepresent the entire country genre. One reason these mainstream
country radio panels are published and portrayed as being representative
of the entire country genre is to attempt to portray country music as
more exclusionary than it actually is. But these studies actively
participate in erasing the impact of women, LGBT, and Black and Brown
contributors. The only thing corporate country radio playlists represent
is corporate country radio, which increasingly has become niche
programming catering to a small, but highly valued mainstream country
lifestyle demographic appealing to specific advertisers.
What
Keith Hill exposed through TomatoGate was how the corporate country
radio system began working like a self-fulfilling prophesy. If you say
women shouldn’t make up a significant portion of radio playlists because
they can’t succeed, then you being to preordain this activity, as
opposed to taking into consideration the economic viability of each
radio single, and giving it an equal opportunity regardless of the
gender, or any other identity factor of the performer. But saying
artists can’t succeed without mainstream country radio is an
self-fulfilling prophesy as well, and one just as irresponsible as
excluding a single just because a woman is performing it.
It’s
not that caring about the quality or outcome of mainstream country radio
is completely unimportant. Concerned country fans, artists, advocates,
and the media should be continuing to put pressure on the format to be
more inclusive, and not just to women, LGBT and POC artists, but also to
independent artists, quality songs, and songs that actually sound
country. After all, despite all the rhetoric from the academic and
journalism class when it comes to country radio, the most discriminated
demographic on the country format continues to be artists who actually
play country music.
But to continue to assert that country radio
is the only way to stardom or success is a dangerous falsehood that is
likely injuring the prospects of certain women in country music similar
to radio’s continued exclusion of them. Meanwhile, even if country radio
was able to be won over by those calling for more diversity, what would
be the ultimate end? Radio across the board continues to lose market
share to streaming and podcasts in trends that are only increasing and
elongating over time. All the effort, attention, energy, and in some
instances, money being spent to return women to country radio is all
being expended upon a rapidly depreciating asset.
It’s better to
set women up for a brighter future through healthier alternatives as
opposed to waiting for mainstream country radio to play ball, which it
has shown absolutely no desire to do. In fact, the adverse trends to
diversifying mainstream country radio continue to become even more
ingrained over time, as nationalized playlists, syndication,
consolidation, the laying off of local staff, the shortening of
playlists, and the elongation of how much time it takes for a country
single to mature means even less artists and songs have opportunities to
be showcased on the country radio format than seven years ago when
TomatoGate occurred.
And meanwhile, on the independent side of
country music, it’s like a new era. Of course there are still too few
spots for too many worthy artists, and a gulf between the have’s and
have not’s, including for women. But the gatekeepers are no longer the
corporations that own major labels or massive radio networks. The fans
are deciding who wins, who becomes a headliner, who is a middle act, and
who is the hot up-and-comer, with festivals codifying these trends and
attracting tens of thousands of fans for non mainstream radio-supported
artists who receive millions of streams through online networks.
Again,
this doesn’t mean we should completely eliminate our concern for
country radio. It still serves a significant demographic, no matter how
quickly it might be dwindling, and radio still represents what country
music is to millions of people. But we have to stop pretending that it’s
the only way to make a country music career, because it isn’t. There
are many alternatives, and those alternatives are growing stronger every
day. And as opposed to the women of country waiting for the next book,
the next think piece, the next initiative to finally tear down the
unfair system restricting their access to a dying medium, they should
start taking advantage to the alternatives to mainstream radio, and the
success so many have found pointing their noses in that more favorable
direction.
This weekend, thousands of attendees flocked to
Pasadena, California for the inaugural Palomino Festival, with Kacey
Musgraves headlining, Willie Nelson also playing, independent success
stories such as Jason Isbell, Zach Bryan, and the Turnpike Troubadours
playing premier spots, and artists representing diversity such as
Charley Crockett and Orville Peck also on the lineup.
Next
weekend, Under The Big Sky Fest in Montana will commence, with massive
crowds taking in headliners Cody Jinks and the Turnpike Troubadours,
fast-rising women like Sierra Ferrell, and even artists that have
enjoyed some mainstream radio attention such as Lainey Wilson, Midland,
and Jamey Johnson.
This is country music. The thousands
of people attending these events, they wouldn’t be caught dead
listening to mainstream country radio. Even if they started trickling in
some of their more favorite artists, or some artists already on the
format began to become their favorites, they still wouldn’t listen. Why?
Because they’ve found a better way to discover music, and the community
that comes along with it.
Radio will always be a component to
country music. This is the reason there’s a radio antenna atop the
Country Music Hall of Fame rotunda, and a corresponding antenna pointing
down to the center point of that hallowed space. But it’s continued
failure to contemporize to current trends, to represent the best country
music has to offer, and to just flat out not sound country has made it a
depreciating asset, while so many alternatives centered on quality and
discovery continue to define the future of music.
Stop acting
like radio is the only way to create a star in country. That era ended
seven years ago. And the future of country radio, if it has one, will be
independent, and local, with listeners drawing personal connections
with radio personalities, just like they do from their favorite
independent artists, who on the whole feel more real and authentic
compared to those peddled by the mainstream on pop country radio.
