Country music lags behind in streaming era

[Gary]

Country Music Struggles to Keep Up With Streaming Era

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By Melinda Newman | August 25, 2017 4:33 PM EDT


In a streaming world, one of the industry's most traditionally dominant genres struggles to keep up

Next week, Sony Nashville chairman/CEO Randy Goodman and executive vp/COO Ken Robold will travel to Amazon's, Spotify's and Apple's US headquarters to tout their heavy fourth quarter release slate. Also tops on the agenda: how to convert lagging country consumers to streaming.

Though country music accounts for 11.5 percent of all albums and track equivalent albums sold in the United States for the first half of 2017, the genre comprises only 5.6 percent of all streams, according to Nielsen Music. On Nielsen's top streaming artist tally for 2016, which combined on-demand audio and video streaming, the highest ranking country artist was Luke Bryan at No. 35 with 894 million streams, compared with Drake, who topped the chart with 6.8 billion streams.

More recently, for the chart week ending Aug. 11, The Billboard 200's No. 1 album, rapper Kendrick Lamar's Damn, earned 46.6 million streams. Country singer Brett Eldredge's self-titled set, which debuted at No 2, garnered 8.8 million streams, according to Nielsen.

"We have to far outpace the growth of the industry to get our numbers up there," Robold says. "It's a daily thing for us. Every marketing plan, there's some element of how do we educate the consumer on streaming. We're maniacally focused on it."

Read more: Kendrick Lamar's 'DAMN.' Beats Out Brett Eldredge for No. 1 Spot on Billboard 200 | Billboard News

The urgency has increased as streaming becomes the dominant consumption method: In 2016 streaming totaled 51 percent of revenue, according to the RIAA, marking the first time streaming had surpassed combined digital and physical sales.

Country consumers have not kept pace with their pop and hip hop counterparts because they skew older and have traditionally been resistant to switch to new delivery systems, labels say. "The 5.5 percent of the streaming market is up from 4 percent two years ago, but, man, we all anticipated those numbers to be bigger by now," says Universal Music Group Nashville Chairman/CEO Mike Dungan.

Dungan is confident that country fans will eventually catch up, but fears "it's going to be tough for country music in the short term. I worry that for one or two years [the genre] could be caught with not enough money coming in from streaming and the loss of money from the physical and [downloading] side." Among UMG Nashville's artists leading the streaming charge in addition to Bryan, are Sam Hunt, Keith Urban, and, despite the older demo, George Strait. "His streaming numbers are phenomenal. they knock your head back. I wish I knew why," Dungan says.

Read more: Taylor Swift Made $400K In Revenue After Returning to Streaming Services | Billboard News

At Sony Nashville, newcomers like Kane Brown and Luke Combs are bringing in young fans who were raised on streaming. Thanks to such artists -- even though Brown is only on his third single, he is already one of Sony Nashville's highest streaming artists -- streaming accounts for almost 40 percent of Sony Nashville's revenue, Robold says.

Labels are looking at myriad ways to bolster the numbers, while admitting there is not a one-size-fits-all solution. With so many country fans already using Amazon Prime, Robold says Amazon Music is a likely growth area. "We've been really focused on making country music fans feel at home on Amazon Music, whether it's having the exclusive rights to Garth Brooks' entire catalog, promoting up-and-coming country artists like Levon, or sponsoring the CMA Music Fest," Steve Boom, vp of Amazon Music, tells Billboard. The results are impressive: for the week ending Aug. 14, there were 27 country tracks in Amazon's overall top 50 tracks. Conversely, on Apple, Robold says country music usually accounts for a handful of songs in the top 50.

Many, too, also herald Spotify's Hot Country playlist, curated by Spotify's head of country music John Marks, as a driver to bring in new listeners. While Marks notes, "there's plenty of headroom for growth in the country market," the Hot Country playlist has almost 4 million followers, making it Spotify's fifth most listened to playlist worldwide. Pandora is also making inroads, and like Apple, Spotify, and Amazon, has offices in Nashville.

Streaming services are wooing country fans offline. Amazon has organized Echo campaigns around Miranda Lambert and Brooks. Spotify ran a national TV commercial featuring Tim McGraw and Faith Hill the night they premiered their new song on the Academy of Country Music Awards in April. In 2016, Apple ran a television commercial featuring Kenny Chesney and currently Brantley Gilbert stars in an Apple spot. For a recent Old Dominion show in Nashville, fans were given laminates with a 3-step process on how to sign up for Spotify.

While labels and streaming services are focused on the younger consumers, they are not abandoning the older fans, whom they desperately need to convert to get up to scale. "More and more people are going to get smart phones and realize that can have all the Kenny Chesney and Miranda Lambert music they want for $10 a month," Robold says. "We're not giving up on them."

This story originally appeared in the September 2 issue of Billboard.

[Au$tin]

In other news, water is wet.

But seriously, country always lags. It was slow to digital sales too, but it's doing just fine there now. It will eventually catch up to streaming.

[Envoirment]

I think the main issue is likely due to playlisting. I hardly see any country songs on the big spotify playlists.

[Choco]

Country audience is usually older. By the time they adopt streaming, we could be already moving on to another platform (kind of like how they took forever to adopt downloads and now that's on the decline).

[Naos]

Unless you're Body Like a Backroad anyway. Which somehow got streaming.

[Deleted]

Aug 26, 2017 10:53:34 GMT -5 Envoirment said:

I think the main issue is likely due to playlisting. I hardly see any country songs on the big spotify playlists.

Country is the only genre that seems to severely lack crossover potential, and its fans have as a whole always been highly disinterested in 'mingling' with other styles of music, so it will probably never find its way to the big all-genre playlists, save for a Cruise/Body Like a Backroad kind of hit.

There is only one country-specific Spotify playlist that has more than 1 million subscribers, but there are multiple hip-hop, r&b, and pop playlists with that many subscribers. I think labels need to lean on Spotify to promote those country playlists more frequently in the ads and on the Overview page (so non-country fans can see them and maybe check them out of curiosity), and find ways to promote the playlists in places where country listeners already are (in hopes that the adverts convince them to sign up for a free account at least).

They could do this with other streaming services too - since country listeners finally caught on to digital, have a couple of iTunes banners that promote Apple Music playlists. Do some kind of promo with Google Play/Youtube Red...Google Play is so terrible though lol, they don't have good playlists for anybody never mind country fans. Maybe get some label intern to make several YT playlists and then have YT promote them. Actually now that I think about it Youtube might be the best way to try to 'ease' country fans into the streaming world.

[YourFaveIsAFlop]

Country music is never going to have the kind if global appeal that pop and hiphop do, so im not surprised streaming services havent gone balls out trying to promote country music on their big playlists.

[androboy]

Country suffers from the same problem that Rock/Metal faces. It's not a genre that has wide appeal outside of it's base, and is often denigrated by those not in the loop. This is especially abundant with Country, as there's lots of social and poitical undertones to much of the music that ends up pushing people away.

Also, as mentioned above, both genres also have an audience that skews older and prefers purchasing albums versus streaming.

[jenglisbe]

Aug 28, 2017 0:41:48 GMT -5 Naos said:

Unless you're Body Like a Backroad anyway. Which somehow got streaming.

Did it? Where did it peak in streaming?

Aug 28, 2017 1:41:56 GMT -5 @antigonerising said:

Aug 26, 2017 10:53:34 GMT -5 Envoirment said:

I think the main issue is likely due to playlisting. I hardly see any country songs on the big spotify playlists.

Country is the only genre that seems to severely lack crossover potential, and its fans have as a whole always been highly disinterested in 'mingling' with other styles of music, so it will probably never find its way to the big all-genre playlists, save for a Cruise/Body Like a Backroad kind of hit.

The irony of your post being that "Cruise" and "Body Like A Backroad" borrow heavily from non-country genres. 'Country' is pretty open to outside influences, just maybe not to non-country artists trying to pass themselves off as country. I can't blame them there, tbh.

Having said that, I recognize that country is very closed to females and minorities, so I'm not trying to act like it's some open-minded level playing field. I'm speaking strictly in terms of style of music; 'country' has been open to rock, hip-hop, etc influences.

[Deleted]

Aug 28, 2017 15:38:50 GMT -5 jenglisbe said:

Aug 28, 2017 0:41:48 GMT -5 Naos said:

Unless you're Body Like a Backroad anyway. Which somehow got streaming.

Did it? Where did it peak in streaming?

Aug 28, 2017 1:41:56 GMT -5 @antigonerising said:

Country is the only genre that seems to severely lack crossover potential, and its fans have as a whole always been highly disinterested in 'mingling' with other styles of music, so it will probably never find its way to the big all-genre playlists, save for a Cruise/Body Like a Backroad kind of hit.

The irony of your post being that "Cruise" and "Body Like A Backroad" borrow heavily from non-country genres. 'Country' is pretty open to outside influences, just maybe not to non-country artists trying to pass themselves off as country. I can't blame them there, tbh.

Having said that, I recognize that country is very closed to females and minorities, so I'm not trying to act like it's some open-minded level playing field. I'm speaking strictly in terms of style of music; 'country' has been open to rock, hip-hop, etc influences.

Oh, I wasn't saying that those two songs 'borrow' anything from other genres, just saying that that type of country is the only kind that seems to get any chances of play outside of the country format. Unless the irony is just in calling those two songs country? lol. I know a lot of country fans rebuke them in the name of Jesus.

Country fans not mingling with other music genres -> they don't like listening to non-country songs. So they would probably not bother checking out Today's Top Hits just because the latest country hits appear there. Putting any country song there will at best bring in streams from non-country fans who otherwise wouldn't have heard the song, but that doesn't solve the problem of current country fans not streaming.

[YourFaveIsAFlop]

Aug 28, 2017 15:38:50 GMT -5 jenglisbe said:

Aug 28, 2017 0:41:48 GMT -5 Naos said:

Unless you're Body Like a Backroad anyway. Which somehow got streaming.

Did it? Where did it peak in streaming?

Aug 28, 2017 1:41:56 GMT -5 @antigonerising said:

Country is the only genre that seems to severely lack crossover potential, and its fans have as a whole always been highly disinterested in 'mingling' with other styles of music, so it will probably never find its way to the big all-genre playlists, save for a Cruise/Body Like a Backroad kind of hit.

The irony of your post being that "Cruise" and "Body Like A Backroad" borrow heavily from non-country genres. 'Country' is pretty open to outside influences, just maybe not to non-country artists trying to pass themselves off as country. I can't blame them there, tbh.

Having said that, I recognize that country is very closed to females and minorities, so I'm not trying to act like it's some open-minded level playing field. I'm speaking strictly in terms of style of music; 'country' has been open to rock, hip-hop, etc influences.

Bro country, for sure. But there are plenty of country fans who dont consider that country at all

[Naos]

jenglisbe Yes, it peaked at #16 on Streaming Songs. So it did get some streaming. And @antigonerising, I am one of those people. I will never call Thomas Rhett's latest singles "Craving You" and "Unforgettable" country songs. Because they're pop songs, a little twang in the vocals don't automatically make everything you do country, and not having twang doesn't mean your songs aren't country (pre-Red Taylor Swift is a good example of this). I still like them. But I both despise "Body Like a Back Road" and will never call it a country song.

Oh, and I'm tagging rather than quoting because it seems like a pain.

[Au$tin]

Aug 29, 2017 13:56:43 GMT -5 Naos said:

I still like them. But I both despise "Body Like a Back Road" and will never call it a country song.

This is funny since pop music fans don't claim it either.

[jenglisbe]

Aug 29, 2017 13:56:43 GMT -5 Naos said:

jenglisbe Yes, it peaked at #16 on Streaming Songs.

While that's good for 'country' music, it isn't notable in an overall sense. Considering its airplay and sales, it shows even more how poorly 'country' songs do in streaming.

Sept 2, 2017 22:38:29 GMT -5 Au$tin said:

Aug 29, 2017 13:56:43 GMT -5 Naos said:

I still like them. But I both despise "Body Like a Back Road" and will never call it a country song.

This is funny since pop music fans don't claim it either.

Well, it's outdated pop music (i.e. about 15 years ago). That's actually more current than a lot of the 80s rock that passes for country music these days.