Power Gold: Concentration Game CMA Sets Trend for Industry
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February 10, 2020, Issue 691 Power Gold: Concentration Game This edition of Country Aircheck’s Power Gold is led by eight artists who combine for 46 of the Top 100 most-heard Gold hits. Luke Bryan and Florida Georgia Line lead the parade with seven songs apiece, followed by Jason Aldean and Zac Brown Band with six each. Rounding out the top PG hit-makers are Kenny Chesney, Thomas Rhett, Blake Shelton and Carrie Underwood, all with five hits in the Top 100. One artist – Dierks Bentley – places four songs in this elite group, meaning that nine acts are responsible for 50% of the current Power Gold. More thoughts on that later. Twenty-three songs from 20 artists are new Luke Bryan to the Top 100 since we ran the list last year (CAW 1/14/19). Interestingly, four songs in that group are more than five years old and are actually making a return appearance to the PG 100. They are Tim McGraw’s “Live Like You Were Dying” (2004), Bentley’s “Free And Easy (Down The Staff Hearted: WNCY/Appleton, WI’s Shotgun Shannon, Luke Road I Go)” (2007), Bryan’s “I See You” (2015) and FGL’s “Sippin’ Reid, Charli McKenzie, Hannah, Dan Stone and PJ (l-r) show On Fire” (2015). off the station’s 23rd annual Y100 Country Cares for St. Jude This Top 100 Power Gold – along with the airplay information in Kids Radiothon total. the previous paragraph – is culled from Mediabase 24/7 and music airplay information from the Country Aircheck/Mediabase reporting panel for the week of January 26-Feb. 1, 2020. Here’s CMA Sets Trend For Industry the Top 10: Know your audience. That’s the goal of CMA’s new research tool TrendWatch, launched last week (CAT 2/4). The monthly 1. Dustin Lynch/Small Town Boy snapshot of consumer behavior relative to country music is based 2. Darius Rucker/Wagon Wheel on independent research of 12,000 music 3. Luke Combs/When It Rains It Pours listeners. February’s first installment focused on 4. Sam Hunt/Body Like A Back Road a growth in country listening, which is a good 5. Florida Georgia Line/Cruise thing to know for a number of reasons. 6. Kane Brown f/Lauren Alaina/What Ifs “The goal is to educate the industry on 7. Zac Brown Band/Chicken Fried Florida Georgia Line the country music consumer of today and 8. Blake Shelton/A Guy With A Girl monitor shifts as our audience expands,” says 9. Billy Currington/Do I Make You Wanna CMA Sr. Dir./Consumer Insights & Research 10. Blake Shelton/Honey Bee Karen Stump. “We focused on defining key Karen Stump (continued on page 7) engagement metrics that would translate to the ©2020 Country Aircheck™ — All rights reserved. Sign up free at www.countryaircheck.com. Send news to [email protected] February 10, 2020 Page 3 MY TUNES: JIM DORMAN industry broadly but also worked to develop a study that represented the broad country music audience that it has become.” iHeartMedia/Wichita cluster PD Jim Any country professional whose efforts intersect with those Dorman discusses his most influential outside the format/genre can find application. “The data has music: uses in selling country as a genre, supporting brand opportunities 1. The Beach Boys: Growing up in Southern with partners and tracking shifts in engagements relative to new CA, it was a rite of passage to be a Beach Boys initiatives at the genre level by access providers, just to name a fan. I have more than 60 different Beach Boys’ few,” Stump says. “The ongoing understanding of these country albums on vinyl. audience behaviors is an educational opportunity for all of us as 2. The first concert I ever attended was Jim Dorman we seek to grow the genre.” The Beach Boys at the Tacoma Dome Dec. 9, An outgrowth of CMA’s 2017 study The State of Country Music 1977. That was a religious experience for a huge fan. Streaming, TrendWatch’s first iteration – sent to members via 3. Electric Light Orchestra’s Discovery: I was a huge Jeff email – pulled insights from May to December 2019. A standout Lynne fan. in its findings was the overall increase in daily listening among 4. The Rolling Stones’ Bridges to Babylon Tour at RFK the country audience, from 25% in May to 27% by year’s end. But Stadium: The second best concert I ever attended. ...what exactly is “daily country listening?” “Any platform they can 5. Chicago: I love their non-wimpy music. Show me an artist choose to listen to country music, which includes AM/FM radio, with a horn section, and I’m in. satellite radio, all major DSPs, their personal CD collection, digital • Highly regarded music you’ve actually never heard: songs and albums, TV and video (which includes YouTube and I have yet to listen to a Chris Stapleton album. The only songs Vevo),” says Stump. I’ve heard are the singles. Additional findings: • An “important” piece or style of music you just don’t The shift in more daily listeners is most evident among 18- to get: Bluegrass. 34-year-old and 50- to 64-year-old country listeners. • An album you listened to incessantly: Runaway June’s The average country listener spends roughly 50% of their music new album [Blue Roses]. Their version of “Fast As You” is an listening time with country and the same share with other genres. amazing cover. Country audience size held steady across 2019 with one in two • An obscure or non-country song everyone should adults listening to country at least monthly. listen to right now: Plastic Bertrand’s “Ça Plane Pour Moi.” CMA members can expect the monthly update of key measures, You can’t sit still listening. Plus, it has a Beach Boys-feel to me plus a more detailed version shared on a quarterly basis. The … at least with the background singers. information is expected to evolve and grow but will keep tabs on • Music you’d rather not admit to enjoying: Prior to baseline trends. Additional insights may include demographic this moment, I would never have admitted to listening to the segmentation and regional analysis. Membership can be applied Backstreet Boys. for here. –Caitlin DeForest ©2020 Country Aircheck™ — All rights reserved. Sign up free at www.countryaircheck.com. Send news to [email protected] February 10, 2020 Page 6 Flip Side Effects: The C’Ya On The Flipside II Concert raises $200,000 for The Troy Gentry Foundation Wednesday (2/5) at the Grand Ole Opry House. Chart Chat News & Notes Congratulations to Maren Morris, Steve Hodges, Shane Pat Green will perform during the Texas Heritage Allen and the Columbia promotion team on Songwriters’ Association 2020 Hall of Fame Awards Show Feb. landing at No. 1 with “The Bones.” The song 22 at Austin’s Paramount Theatre. is the second single from Morris’ second studio Doug Stone and Terry McBride signed with APA Nashville. album, Girl, and is Morris’ third career No. Michael Ray, Emily Weisband and Blessing Offor 1. Songwriters are Jimmy Robbins, Laura have joined Save The Music and SongFarm.org’s Hometown to Veltz and Morris. Hometown lineup (CAT 1/22). And kudos to Allen and the Columbia reps The Voice’s Jake Hoot and Barrett Baber will perform on notching 40 adds for Luke Combs’ “Does during One Country’s inaugural meal packing event at Cross To Me” featuring Eric Church, topping this Maren Morris Point Church in Nashville 12-4pm CT Saturday (2/15). Register to week’s board for a second consecutive week. volunteer here. ©2020 Country Aircheck™ — All rights reserved. Sign up free at www.countryaircheck.com. Send news to [email protected] February 10, 2020 Page 7 85 hits, or fully 33% of all the music on Country radio during the The Week’s Top Stories survey week. Next I added the number of titles they had in the Top Full coverage at countryaircheck.com. 1000 most-played Gold songs. I found they delivered 239 hits; • WDAF/Kansas City PD Mike Kennedy discusses the finer 21% of all the music on Country radio during the survey week. points of stepping away (and back) in last week’s (2/3) Country Taking the analysis a step further, I then totaled all of the airplay Aircheck Weekly. from artists whose number of Currents/Recurrents/Gold totaled • Warner Music Group filed for an IPO. (CAT 2/7) at least 15 titles among the 1,144 songs (144 Recurrent and • Steve “Shotgun” Kelly has joined KKOW/Pittsburg, MO as 1000 Gold titles.) What I found is that 21 artists had 505 songs, PD/afternoon personality. (CAT 2/6) which represents 44% of all the music heard on Country radio the • Aaron “Woody” Woods joined WHKO/Dayton for week of the survey. Looking at the Top 100 Power Gold/Currents/ mornings. (CAT 2/5) Recurrents, those same 21 acts had 119 of the total, representing • Sun Broadcast Group acquired Envision Networks. (CAT 2/4) 46% of all airplay. • Check out the ACM Radio Awards nominees here. (CAT 2/3) For those who think 1000 Gold songs is too deep, I also ran • Florida Georgia Line have signed with Full Stop the stats in the examples above using the Top 250 Gold songs, Management. (CAT 2/3) which is more in-line with the average Country station’s Gold category. All airplay from the nine core Top 100 Power Gold Power Gold: Concentration Game artists accounted for 123 Gold/Currents/Recurrents or 30% of the (continued from page 1) music heard.