Before And After Pictures: Country’s Musical Landscape In 2009 and Now

“Before and after” pictures can sometimes be startling. Especially when something that was iconic has changed dramatically, is no longer present or when something new “suddenly” appears.

Because we’re paying attention to our formats on a daily basis and appropriately navigating our stations through changes, good programmers aren’t generally subject to before-and-after-shock.

Even so, side-by-sides of the past and present can be both interesting and useful in giving us a perspective on the pace of change.

Here’s a “before and after” look at Mediabase’s Top 10 Most Played Artists (all stations) for the year 2009 and just 3 ½ years later the most played artists to date in 2013. Only three artists – Kenny, Tim and Brad – appear in both snapshots. Seven artists from 2009 have been replaced by seven different artists so far this year.

2009	Artist	Spins		2013	Artist	Spins
1	KENNY CHESNEY	1093702		1	CHESNEY, KENNY	529588
2	TOBY KEITH	1043185		2	SHELTON, BLAKE	481823
3	TIM MCGRAW	882167		3	ALDEAN, JASON	481657
4	GEORGE STRAIT	847920		4	PAISLEY, BRAD	458663
5	BRAD PAISLEY	846708		5	UNDERWOOD, CARRIE	426473
6	RASCAL FLATTS	835130		6	BROWN, ZAC BAND	404099
7	KEITH URBAN	825170		7	MCGRAW, TIM	381991
8	ALAN JACKSON	750887		8	BRYAN, LUKE	359250
9	TAYLOR SWIFT	636428		9	LADY ANTEBELLUM	345478
10	BROOKS & DUNN	625323		10	LAMBERT, MIRANDA	331575

If we pull the lens back a bit to look at the Top 20 most played artists over the same time period, we can see more consistency in names but a number of rankings are significantly different and  there’s quite a bit of churn at the bottom of both lists.

2009	Artist	Spins		2013	Artist	Spins
1	KENNY CHESNEY	1093702		1	CHESNEY, KENNY	529588
2	TOBY KEITH	1043185		2	SHELTON, BLAKE	481823
3	TIM MCGRAW	882167		3	ALDEAN, JASON	481657
4	GEORGE STRAIT	847920		4	PAISLEY, BRAD	458663
5	BRAD PAISLEY	846708		5	UNDERWOOD, CARRIE	426473
6	RASCAL FLATTS	835130		6	BROWN, ZAC BAND	404099
7	KEITH URBAN	825170		7	MCGRAW, TIM	381991
8	ALAN JACKSON	750887		8	BRYAN, LUKE	359250
9	TAYLOR SWIFT	636428		9	LADY ANTEBELLUM	345478
10	BROOKS & DUNN	625323		10	LAMBERT, MIRANDA	331575
11	DIERKS BENTLEY	606851		11	URBAN, KEITH	327423
12	MONTGOMERY GENTRY	570204		12	THE BAND PERRY	326189
13	CARRIE UNDERWOOD	560249		13	STRAIT, GEORGE	310322
14	SUGARLAND	526223		14	KEITH, TOBY	306397
15	DARIUS RUCKER	511694		15	BENTLEY, DIERKS	299723
16	JASON ALDEAN	499024		16	RASCAL FLATTS	280816
17	ZAC BROWN BAND	474769		17	BRICE, LEE	279473
18	BILLY CURRINGTON	458349		18	CHURCH, ERIC	277111
19	GARTH BROOKS	447462		19	FLORIDA-GEORGIA LINE	276032
20	RODNEY ATKINS	444324		20	HAYES, HUNTER	271619

A look at album sales yields a similar picture; fully half of the artists making up this year’s top 10 selling albums (Florida Georgia Line, Luke Bryan, The Band Perry, Hunter Hayes and Little Big Town) weren’t in the top 25 for the year 2009.

Again, this is not particularly surprising. Back in February at CRS, A&O&B reported that listeners claimed to have ‘”discovered” four of these five acts within the past 12 months (Florida Georgia Line being the exception). 

As a “before and after” side note, not too long ago, stations’ “Core/Key Artists” lists often numbered somewhere between 6 and 9.  For many stations today that list is 50% longer.  And that’s a good thing for the format.

None of this should be surprising of course, and that’s the point.

“Before and after” is fun and makes for an interesting look at the speed with which things change (or don’t change). But staying on top of listener trends is a far better way to be relevant.