At the beginning of July, Nielsen Music released the list of the top selling country albums for the first half of 2019. While there are not too many surprises, the sales are noticeably lower in the aggregate compared to the sales of the top albums in the past few years. Just eight years ago in 2011, Lady Antebellum’s Own the Night sold over 1.2 million copies in that year alone, with other artists seeing similar numbers (CMT, 2011). Comparatively, the top selling country album for the first half of the year was George Straight’s Honky Tonk Time Machine. With its 113,000 copies sold through July 1, it is on pace to sell around 230,000 copies by the end of year if it maintains this pace and gets a boost during the holiday season. That 230,000 is less than a fifth of the number of sales from 2011’s top selling album and is an 81% decrease.
2019’s Mid-Year Top 10 Selling Country Albums 1. George Strait, Honky Tonk Time Machine (113,000) 2. Kacey Musgraves, Golden Hour (97,000) 3. Luke Combs, This One’s For You (91,000) 4. Florida Georgia Line, Can’t Say I Ain’t Country (82,000) 5. Chris Stapleton, Traveller (80,000) 6. Carrie Underwood, Cry Pretty (79,000) 7. Maren Morris, Girl (60,000) 8. Thomas Rhett, Center Point Road (59,000) 9. Dan + Shay, Dan + Shay (53,000) 10. Brooks & Dunn, Reboot (52,000)
The obvious reason for this huge reduction is that streaming services now dominate mainstream music consumption. Gone are the days of paying $0.99-$1.29 for a single song on iTunes and buying an entire album for $10-$20. Now, services such as Spotify and Apple Music offer unlimited streams of every song in their libraries for just $10/month. Furthermore, YouTube features all of this music in video form for no cost at all. Others get their music through free online radio services, which run advertisements but fairly infrequently. This has changed the entire landscape of the music industry due to the drastically different revenue streams. It has also changed the way that sales metrics are processed. Equivalent Album Units are now used to compensate for streaming numbers and not surprisingly paints a much clearer picture of which albums have been the most popular so far in 2019. The updated chart that includes streaming metrics is shown below.
2019’s Mid-Year Top 10 Country Albums (Based on Overall Equivalent Album Units*) 1. Luke Combs, This One’s for You (605,000) 2. Dan + Shay, Dan + Shay (387,000) 3. Chris Stapleton, Traveller (292,000) 4. Florida Georgia Line, Can’t Say I Ain’t Country (284,000) 5. Kacey Musgraves, Golden Hour (274,000) 6. Kane Brown, Experiment (251,000) 7. Maren Morris, Girl (248,000) 8. Jason Aldean, Rearview Town (237,000) 9. Kane Brown, Kane Brown (231,000) 10. Morgan Wallen, If I Know Me (211,000)
*Courtesy of Billboard: "Equivalent album units are comprised of traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported on-demand audio streams generated by songs on an album, or 1,250 paid subscription on-demand audio streams generated by songs on an album. (For the sake of clarity, equivalent album units do not include listening to music on broadcast radio or digital radio broadcasts.)"
Empirically, this makes a lot more sense as the genre wouldn’t see an 80% decrease in sales over such a short period of time; the music was just accessed in a different manner. This chart also better passes the eye test compared to its counterpart. Luke Combs is on top of the genre right now with everything he touches shooting to #1, Dan + Shay has been riding the wave of “Tequila” to multiple hits, and Kane Brown is emerging as a young superstar (regardless of what Scott Borchetta has to say about it).
As I digested the information presented in this chart, I came to the realization that 2019 may be looked back on as an inflection point. It appears the established superstars of the decade in Florida Georgia Line and Jason Aldean have slightly lost their iron clad grip on the charts. Anchored by Luke Combs, Dan + Shay, Kane Brown and Morgan Wallen, we are seeing a new generation of top artists that are bringing their own sounds and style to the genre. It has completely permeated the market and the younger generation's love for social media can potentially be identified as the catalyst for this change.
Social Media’s Impact on Country Music & the Mid-Year Top Album List
For whatever reason, country music has recently witnessed a rash of viral sensations that have shook the genre. Mason Ramsey’s emergence as “Yodel Boy” from a video of him yodeling in a small-town Walmart took the internet by storm. The 12-year-old is now signed to Big Loud Records and has toured with Florida Georgia Line and Chris Lane. The “Old Town Road” saga has continued to divide Nashville and the rest of the country on what is a country song and what is not. This all started when Lil Nas X marketed the song via a YouTube video playing the song over scenes from the very popular western based video game, Red Dead Redemption 2. That video now has over 76 million views, the official music video has 205 million views, and the audio visualizer for the remix with Billy Ray Cyrus has 296 million views on YouTube. And now, there is a second remix in which Ramsey and Lil Nas X have collaborated. In today’s day and age, Internet “memes” can become sensations overnight. However, the rise of young country artists such as Luke Combs, Dan + Shay, Kane Brown and Morgan Wallen can be partially attributed to a more moderate form of success on social media.
As an avid user of Twitter to keep up with the latest news and information, I rely on that platform to share the work that I do, but more importantly observe what is going on throughout the genre. The various country music artists that I listen to make up the bulk of the accounts that I follow on Twitter. Yet the more I checked my feed, the more I saw content related to a few key artists. Those artists, Luke Combs, Dan + Shay, Kane Brown and Morgan Wallen, also happen to have albums on Nielsen’s list of 2019 best-selling albums based on streaming equivalence.
I looked across other social media platforms (Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube) and found the same phenomena. It seemed clear to me that some artists were leveraging social media in a much more effective manner and at higher frequencies, but I wanted to find clear evidence to confirm my theory. Therefore, I turned to Twitter because it publicly provides the most amount of relevant data for analysis, including the account’s number of followers, accounts following, tweets, and likes. I decided to expand Nielsen’s top-selling album list to feature key statistics about each artist’s Twitter account. The result, show below, also lists the album’s release date and which number album it was for that artist.
After taking a deep dive into the data, I found that number of followers and likes are most relevant to this study. Therefore, I devised the Twitter Activity Ratio (TAR) which uses number of likes as a proxy for overall usage of the platform and compares this number to the account’s number of followers as a percentage. It represents a crude measurement of how much the artist (or their marketing team) uses the platform and therefore views Twitter content. As seen in the table, there is an extremely large range in TAR on this list because the number of likes varies so greatly. Yet upon sorting the data, the strongest trend in the numbers shows that there is a correlation between number of Twitter likes and equivalent album sales. The following chart explains this in further detail.
Ordering these artists based on number of Twitter likes from left to right, the orange line quantifies this ordering and the z-axis (right side of the chart) shows the magnitudes. The y-axis (left side of the chart) quantifies the number of equivalent sales through July 1, 2019. Both of these axis shows their respective quantities in thousands. Finally, the dotted blue line is a linear trendline of sales across the artists with increasing amounts of Twitter likes, which confirms my hypothesis. Of the ten most commercially successful albums so far this year, the nine artists’ (since Kane Brown had two albums on the list) Twitter activity loosely correlates with first-half sales in 2019.
Yes, this chart is clearly far from perfect. Chris Stapleton and Florida Georgia Line are in the top half of sales but at the bottom of this ranking, and Morgan Wallen is last in the sales ranking but near the top in Twitter activity. This is obviously because an artist liking thousands of tweets does not guarantee them musical success. There are many ways for artists and their labels to promote music, and for established artists like Jason Aldean and Florida Georgia Line, social media does not have to be one of those. Other artists, such as Chris Stapleton and Kacey Musgraves, have garnered their success from their recognition by the genre’s award committees. Ultimately, the sales of music should be, and is, largely based on the quality of the work. However, I believe this trend is worth further consideration because of the emerging artists on this list: Kane Brown, Morgan Wallen, Luke Combs, and Dan + Shay. These are the artists at the top of this ranking and can each individually be used as a case study for social media promotion.
Morgan Wallen
When it comes to TAR, Morgan Wallen is the gold standard. He gave me the idea to do this study after littering my Twitter feed with tweets from his fans, which of course showed up because he liked them. His TAR being over 50% is incredible and only attainable because he does not just like tweets in which he is mentioned using his Twitter handle. Wallen actively goes out of his way to find references to himself by searching his name amongst all public tweets and appears to almost never miss a tweet where he is talked about. He does this regardless of whether the tweet paints him in positive or negative light.
What is most important about this process is that Wallen is interacting with fan accounts. While he does interact with blue-check verified news outlets, venues and industry personnel, the vast majority of his social media usage is centered around connecting with fans. In today’s market, concert tickets can cost hundreds of dollars. If you want a chance to meet your favorite artist, you need to at least double that amount to buy a VIP experience which come in extremely limited quantities. Morgan Wallen has found a way to provide free meet and greets by the thousand, every single day.
*Both of these tweets were liked by Morgan Wallen*
For his fans, Wallen liking one of their tweets is a virtual “touch” that leads to that individual becoming an even bigger supporter of his. This means they are more likely to listen to his music, attend his concerts and buy his merchandise. Furthermore, the frequency in which Wallen acknowledges these tweets about himself incentives fans to tweet about him increasingly often. This is almost more impactful than the fan’s individual revenue contributions, because that person’s tweet exposes all of their followers to Wallen. In this way, his name and music can be spread across all of that users’ interconnected circles in an exponential manner.
I believe that this largely contributes to his loyal and growing fan base. While Wallen’s If I Know Me was tenth on the list for mid-year sales, in hindsight this is an extremely impressive accomplishment. At only the age of 26, he has been able to push his debut album which came out all the way back in April of 2018 near the top of the genre. Additionally, his song “Whiskey Glasses” has the third most digital sales thus far in 2019, also as reported by Nielsen music. His unique music, bolstered by his energetic live shows, luscious mullet, and growing fan base are going to make him a force to be reckoned with in the genre for a long time. And if you ask me, his social media strategy may be the key to all of it.
Dan + Shay
With a TAR a little over 44%, Dan + Shay is close to rivaling Morgan Wallen in terms of Twitter connectivity. With their larger account size of 503,000 followers and 225,000 likes they certainly have a big reach on the platform. However, their presence on Twitter is slightly different than Wallen’s. While they acknowledge many of their fan’s tweets with likes, their competitive advantage on the platform is a different one. They use social media to determine the optimal setlist for concerts based on what their fans want to hear the most.
Personally, I have been to countless concerts hoping to hear a specific song that inevitably never gets played. Yes, fans request songs at concerts but with today’s increasingly complex stage and show configurations, adjusting set lists on the fly is very difficult. I believe that polling social media to figure out what fans want to hear is something all artists will be doing in the future, and Dan + Shay is leading the way. Shown below, their tweets from the beginning of 2019 illustrate this process.
As discussed earlier, the revenue avenues for musicians have changed drastically with the rise of streaming and has made touring very important for the profitability of artists. Therefore, providing the best possible fan experience is vital to having successful tours. Playing the songs that fans want to hear the most undoubtedly will make for happier fans and therefore more fans. Dan + Shay’s use of social media to perfect their setlist is a key strategic play and one that I believe will soon be emulated by the majority of artists.
Luke Combs
With the success Combs is having right now, his online marketing strategy is mostly irrelevant. Yet it is important to note that part of Combs’ rise to fame came directly through the Internet. His first establishment of a fan base actually came from the now defunct six-second video app, Vine. He began posting covers of various songs on the platform and gained a large following after his videos were shared millions of times. Vine no longer exists but a YouTube video that combines many of these popular short videos can be seen below.
Now an established star, Combs is no longer reliant on social media to gain traction. Instead, he supplements his musical success with social media marketing similar to his music. One of the things that makes his song-writing so appealing and universal is his relatability. He is the every-man of country music and is able to turn dark moments in life into upbeat, hopeful songs, which has clearly resonated well with fans. Combs is no different on social media as he maintains his persona as a “regular guy” with funny and relatable content.
For example, his tweet above about his frustrations with the game of golf was retweeted over 9,000 times and has over 53,000 likes because so many people feel the same way. Given the reach of this tweet, Callaway Golf took notice and alongside Cole Swindell, gifted him a new set of custom wedges with the words of those tweets. Besides the obvious benefit of the new clubs, this was tremendous publicity for Combs and only grew his fan base.
Finally, Combs does a great job of building hype around upcoming songs and albums by posting clips of him performing unreleased music. His fan base, called “The Bootleggers” occupy all spaces of the Internet and post unreleased music for the others to enjoy. Combs plays right into this by uploading clips himself that accelerate the excitement for new music releases and contributes to his music entering the charts so high.
In short, Luke Combs supplements his extraordinary music with consistent social media branding and usage, which subsequently has produced unparalleled growth in the genre.
Kane Brown
While Kane Brown’s TAR is only around 1.5%, this is because he has such a large following. His 1.57 million followers is third on the list above, only beat out by the much more seasoned acts of Florida Georgia Line and Jason Aldean. Given that his debut album was released just three years ago, this is a huge accumulation of followers and is a product of his discovery. Similar to Luke Combs, Kane Brown’s discovery came after videos of him covering country hits on Facebook spread throughout the community. His cover of George Straight’s “Check Yes or No” was uploaded to Facebook in September of 2015 and now has over 11 million views. He used the exposure he gained from these covers to raise funds to record an EP and has not looked back since. As seen in the 2019 album charts earlier, his first two albums were hugely successful and have been certified RIAA Gold and Platinum respectively.
Now as one of the fastest-rising artists in country music, Brown continues to leverage social media in his career. Instead of posting covers, he now posts videos previewing new music that he has yet to release. This is similar to Luke Combs but differs in that Brown gives his followers a number of likes, shares or retweets to reach in order to get the song released immediately. This has proven to be an extremely effective tool in getting his fans to share his music with their networks, only furthering his reach and growing his fanbase.
Above is the most recent example ahead of the release of his song, “Like A Rodeo”. The video reached a million views on Instagram and just as he promised, the song was released. This is not only a very effective way to grow his fan base, but I believe it is also effective in another manner. Just as many other artists are disrupting the traditional cycle of releasing an album every few years, Kane Brown gradually releases new songs over time. This keeps him at the forefront of country news and gives further publicity to his music. Anchored by his genre-blending style that his fans obviously enjoy, his social media presence has facilitated his rise and taken his career to new heights.
Big Picture
To conclude, social media and specifically Twitter likes are not going to make any artist a star overnight. But the marketing strategies employed by Luke Combs, Dan + Shay, Kane Brown and Morgan Wallen have proven effective, and it is no coincidence they have some of the best-selling albums of the year. They did not achieve this success through social media promotion alone. They are all talented artists in their own ways, and the quality of their music is by far the most important aspect of their accomplishments. However, their similarities in being emerging artists who all utilize social media exceptionally well makes this a trend to keep an eye on in the future.
Moving forward, I expect other artists to take notice and place an emphasis on developing not only their online presence, but their fan interaction using social media platforms. This fan interaction is what has set these four artists’ social media usage apart and contributed to their career acceleration over their peers. One emerging artist who is already doing this is Riley Green. His relatively smaller Twitter account has just over 31,000 followers but he has liked over 22,000 tweets for a TAR of 72%. These likes, similar to Morgan Wallen, are mostly from fans praising his blend of traditional and modern country music. He is also very active on other forms of social media such as Snapchat. With the success of his first few singles and a growing fan base from his online persona, I see him having a very successful debut album and subsequent career.
Each generation born has had an increasing reliance on technology and specifically the online platforms that connect one another. While the music will always be the most important aspect of the business, harnessing the power of the Internet to get that music in the hands of the most consumers possible will likely dictate the power players of not only country music, but the industry as a whole.
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