www.allaccess.com/net-news/archive/story/197481/country-found-more-hits-by-women-here-s-what-happeCountry Found More Hits By Women, Here’s What HappenedJune 18, 2020
by Sean Ross
This guest column was written by radio and music industry veteran SEAN ROSS. Follow him on TWITTER @rossonradio and read more of his columns here.
Throughout the discussion of female artists leading up to this year’s COUNTRY RADIO SEMINAR (CRS), the defense of Country radio’s status quo usually led to one of three claims:
We can’t find the songs to play;
The representation of female artists really isn’t that different than what it has been over the years;
Don’t blame us, blame the listeners.
It seemed odd that programmers felt the need to dig in on the female artists issue. Country radio wasn’t exactly flourishing with its current product. Last JUNE, the format controlled 7% of PPM market listening, according to NIELSEN. By last DECEMBER, that was a 6.2 share. AC’s holiday juggernaut typically leads to lower Country shares, but when PDs arrived at CRS, the JANUARY number had only rebounded to 6.4%.
Female artists were just one of a tangle of product issues -- the lack of tempo, the emphasis on passive titles that took 40 weeks to break and didn’t offer listeners much but neutrality, the glut of similarly written, similarly produced love songs (the genre rightly derided as “boyfriend Country”). It was hard to say what would drive a ratings rebound, but there were plenty of ways the current product could get better.
The “we can’t find the songs” argument started to topple before CRS when MAREN MORRIS’ “The Bones,” a song that had been set up for Country by Hot AC and Triple-A airplay, went to #1. Then we had:
INGRID ANDRESS, “More Hearts Than Mine” at #1
GABBY BARRETT, “I Hope” at #1
CARLY PEARCE & LEE BRICE, “I Hope You’re Happy Now,” this week’s #1
MIRANDA LAMBERT, “Bluebird,” this week’s #6, LAMBERT’s biggest hit in years, and a song of encouragement for many in troubled times.
That might not seem like a lot of songs to pin a sea change on. But since CRS it has been common to see three and even four female acts in the top 10, also including CARRIE UNDERWOOD’s top 10 “Drinking Alone” and GWEN STEFANI’s appearance on “Nobody But You.” (At another time, that might have been the biggest hit involving a female act.)
And then the second point toppled, because having even a few big hits by female artists proved that we had been experiencing a dearth. So far, according to MEDIABASE, “The Bones,” “I Hope,” “More Hearts Than Mine,” and “I Hope You’re Happy Now” comprise four of this year’s top 10 most-played songs of the year to date, based on total spins. On 2019’s most-played songs, the only female representation in the top 10 was LINDSAY ELL’s duet appearance on “What Happens In A Small Town.”
As for that third objection, what did the listeners say? Radio station callout research is proprietary and there has been less of it since the COVID-19 pandemic began, but the durability of the three previous #1s is encouraging. One complaint had been not just the lack of female-led currents, but whether those songs went to recurrent as well. “I Hope” is currently the #4 recurrent, according to MEDIABASE. “The Bones” is #5. “More Hearts Than Mine” is #15. None reached #1 and disappeared. That would suggest that PDs consider them to be listener-ratified hits, perhaps the first two more than the third.
Then there are Country radio’s ratings of the last four months. NIELSEN itself is advising ad buyers not to base decisions on the fluctuations of the past three months. Cume and listening levels for all stations plummeted in MARCH and APRIL then saw a partial rebound in MAY. Ratings shares of the listening that remained was dominated by formats that were upper-demo, male-friendly, and gold-based. Classic Rock stations gained share. Top 40, only recently starting to rebound from its own music issues, was suddenly experiencing its worst lows in nearly 30 years.
The drastically changed listening patterns were reflected in the composition of Country listening. According to NIELSEN, this is the AQH balance over the last five months:
FEBRUARY – 55% female; 45% male
MARCH – 54% female; 46% male
APRIL – 49% female, 51% male
MAY– 51% female, 49% male
And this is what national 6-plus format shares for Country looked like over the same time:
FEBRUARY – 6.4% (6.4% 25-54)
MARCH – 6.3% (6.4% 25-54)
APRIL – 6.6% (6.9% 25-54)
MAY – 6.9% (7.2% 25-54)
There are undoubtedly a lot of factors that go into Country’s relative durability -- it has a longstanding bond with listeners that almost certainly made it a trusted companion in this time of crises. AC’s post-CHRISTMAS momentum ended early because of the disruption in listening patterns. Not every station saw the same share gains. Under the happiest, most typical circumstances, an improvement in Country’s fortunes would be hard to pin down to any one factor when there were multiple ways for the music to improve this SPRING.
However…
When many other current-based formats were down in both cume and share, Country shares rose;
When male listening became an uncharacteristically larger piece of all Country listening in APRIL Country shares rose:
When listening patterns began to stabilize, with female listening achieving a slight edge in MAY, Country shares rose again.
The thing I will say conclusively about what more female artists did for Country over the past four months is that they made stations sound better. But I’m hoping this helps retire the “don’t blame us, blame the listeners” trope. One could hold out for a test in more “normal” times, but it is not clear what “normal” represents in terms of future radio usage and, in any event, “normal” will not return to America symmetrically. And Country’s pre-COVID 19 normal, you’ll recall, was a format malaise.
Country’s female artist discussion is by no means finished. The number of possible hits by female acts is still throttled by the amount of time it takes even the biggest ones to scale the charts. Country radio has created two tracks to #1 -- 18 week songs and 35-45 week songs (or sometimes even longer). We need to start seeing female hits on the former as we establish more reliable hit makers. All we can agree on so far is that there are more female-fronted hits than there were, the format is better for it, and listeners were never really the stumbling block.