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How country music became cool
00:17:21
Streaming of the genre in the US rose by nearly 110% in the five years to 2024
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I'm in Nashville, Tennessee on the biggest night of the year for country music. It's the Country Music association or CMA Awards Show. Fans are gathered behind a fence as they watch their favorite stars walk down the red carpet. They catch a glimpse of Zach Topp, a 28 year old newcomer who's made it big on TikTok and in the charts. I'm Ellie House and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC World Service. Country music is having a boom. Spotify streaming of the genre in the US rose by nearly 110% in the five years to 2024.
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C
I think the barrier of just admitting that you like it has come way down. This might be the coolest time ever.
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To love country music and the country boom has gone global. In the uk, the genre more than doubled its share of the singles market in the space of two years and Australia is now the third largest country music market in the world.
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All over the world, country music has seen a new day rise. Even my teenagers back home in Sweden.
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Love country music and it hasn't happened by chance. Industry heads have been strategizing for years to bring the all American music genre to fans well beyond its borders.
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I've been on this journey. It's felt great the whole time. It's like, oh this is doing better. Oh now it's doing better. Oh, we're still growing. Oh, my gosh.
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B
How did country become cool again? That's our question in today's Business Daily. Y' all ready for more music? Come on now. This next artist had the biggest selling debut country album of the year and he is a nominee tonight for CMA New artist of the year. Please welcome Tucker Wetmore. At the CMA Awards ceremony. Gen Z country heartthrob Tucker Wetmore is sat on a stool all in black with a big belt buckle and an even bigger cowboy hat.
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F
I moved to Nashville in 2020. I without knowing anybody or anything. I just had a handful of songs and a dream.
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Within a few years, he had a publishing deal for his songwriting and then a record deal, releasing his first EP in late 2024.
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F
My life has absolutely changed 360 upside down.
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B
And country music is really seeing a boom at the moment. So you're kind of both a part of that change and also a beneficiary of it. How, how does it feel to be in this booming genre?
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F
It's amazing. What I love so much about country music is the rawness, the stories that the songs tell, and I think a lot of people are catching on to that.
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B
One of the trends that's credited with helping country music break out of its traditional fan base is genre crossing, where young artists like Tucker blend the typical twanging and southern sounds of country with different genres like pop or hip hop.
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F
I grew up kind of a mutt when it comes to music. You know, I remember listening to reggae like my dad's side of the family is super Samoan. So I grew up listening to reggae in the summers and, you know, heavy metal or classic rock.
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This genre fusing isn't brand new. Willie Nelson created a whole new sub genre outlaw country in the 70s by blending the style with rock and folk and blues. But today's artists are bringing this blurring of boundaries back from for a modern, younger audience.
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F
That's definitely what I'm trying to do, is kind of embrace what I love to listen to in the truck on my way here today, you know, and.
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You'Re pretty big on TikTok. I actually first properly came across your music on TikTok. I saw you doing a video to Brunette.
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F
Yep.
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Brunette is a breakout song from Tucker Wetmore's album that's seen viral success on social media and that's now your second most popular song on Spotify. So that has translated from TikTok to streaming. So how, how important is social media nowadays?
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F
It's huge. You know, you're seeing a lot of quote, unquote, overnight success. More so because you can go write a song yesterday, post it today, tomorrow. There's 2 million people that have listened to it. The reach that artists are capable of now is, has never been done. And it's, it's, it's kind of unfathomable.
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B
The growing appeal of country music isn't limited to just the us. Tucker Wetmore is about to embark on his first world tour. He says that the perception of what country music is and who it's for has changed.
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F
Instead of making it so niche and cliquey, understanding that other parts of the world are doing the same exact things that you're doing. Ryan Back Rhodes, eating Mama's cooking Sunday after church. You know, it's like, it's not a place, it's a lifestyle. I am so excited. It feels like a movie. And I haven't even had even press play yet, you know.
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Nashville in Tennessee is known as Music City. It is the birthplace of country music. I'm walking down the main street known as Honky Tonk highway, and it's the middle of the day and yet every single bar has. Is packed out. They've got live music playing, the windows open so that everyone can hear. This really is the living breathing heart of country music. But country music is also going global. I've come to meet Matthias Honsen, who's not what would immediately spring to mind when you think of a Country Music Award winner.
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This is probably the last of the true honky tonks in this city.
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Matias takes me to Roberts, an old bar with cracked leather seats, a stage and walls covered in neon lights and stickers.
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I will receive a CMA award today here in Nashville for International Broadcaster of the Year, which is something for me, coming from a small country like Sweden, an amazing thing to be a part of.
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Mattias is the host of what he says is the biggest country radio show In Scandinavia, called P4 country on Swedish national radio. He'll win this award at a more intimate ceremony dedicated to people who've helped this genre spread around the world.
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It's the honour of my life. P4 country started in 2023, in the midst of the big international country boom. Now they're sound checking here at Roberts. It's actually a good thing. It's good radio.
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Matthias says it started after a listener poll asking audiences what they wanted more of on their national radio.
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And on top of that list was country music.
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The very top.
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At the very top, really, all over the world. Country music has seen a new day rise. Even my teenagers back home in Sweden love country music.
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Sweden is not a country that I would normally think of. When I'm thinking of country, I might think of obviously, America, Canada, the uk. Now I wouldn't think of Sweden. So what. Why is Sweden and the Nordics more generally? Why is that a country that's kind of seeing this boom?
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D
You know, country music is so close to folk music and European folk music. So we're close to nature, we're close to music, folk music, fiddling.
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So nature's a big theme in a.
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Country music and nature is big theme. And hunting and, you know, outdoors. And we're very, very close to that. So we also have our own version of it called dance band music. If you hear it, you would probably say it is American country music with Swedish lyrics.
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For his lifelong commitment to elevating country.
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Music in Sweden and throughout the region.
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We are proud to recognize Matthias Hansen.
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As 2025 CMA International Country Broadcaster Award Recipient.
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Congratulations.
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For a country boy like me.
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Wow.
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So we know that country is really having a moment. CMA Research pinpoints 2024 as the strongest growth year across Canada, Australia, the UK and Germany in the past half decade, bringing us to where we are now. But this didn't just happen. There was a strategy at play across the industry here in Nashville.
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When I went to the UK in 2008, it became very obvious to me that you must be present to win. We've got to be on the ground.
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Scott Borchetta is the founder and chairman of Big Machine label group. He's the man who first signed Taylor Swift, perhaps country music's greatest 21st century success story.
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And from that day, I said to Taylor, said, we need to be on the ground here twice a year. We didn't stop coming. Sometimes kicking and screaming, I'm like, we've got to keep going. We're gonna break, we're gonna break. And then when we are never ever getting back together came out.
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That was in 2012.
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I got the call from the office and said that Radio one had added us into a rotation. And I called Taylor. I said, good news. And she goes, I guess it paid off, didn't it? So I would say that Taylor helped kick down the door of helping our music to travel better. And so while it might feel like a boon to you right now, I think it's our continued success of making our artists understand that we have to go there to win.
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What's the profile of country music listener today?
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I always say that country is its strongest when the net is the widest. And the net is very wide right now. You know, we see all ages now at these shows and probably the advantage that we have over pop and hip hop is we have an older demographic as well because we've added a younger demographic. I think the barrier of just admitting that you like it has come way down because it's, it wasn't always cool to like. It's like this might be the coolest time ever to love country music.
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Grainger for the ones who get it done. I'm Ellie House and today, how did country music become cool again?
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Hi, I'm Millie Olikan. I work for Live Nation. I oversee our global strategy, really for country music internationally.
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Millie is one of the people who has been part of the global expansion of country music.
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I've been on this journey. It's felt great the whole time. It's like, oh, this is doing better. Oh, now it's doing better. Oh, we're still growing. Oh my gosh.
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Millie says the boom we're seeing now is the product of strategy and intentional experimentation abroad. In her case, through live gigs and selling shows is a bigger feat than just selling music.
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We know from streaming data that country music is growing. It's the fastest growing genre in the uk, in Germany, in Australia. But when you're a fan and you're buying a ticket, that's a whole different metric. That's actually more sticky if you, like, someone's prepared to actually pay down their money, perhaps travel, perhaps put themselves up or get accommodation.
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For many years, American country musicians didn't really try to capture these audiences outside.
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Of the U.S. historically, country artists weren't really focused on thinking globally unless someone had a massive hit that became a crossover hit that wasn't being marketed internationally. So that's pretty much what happened. Country music had a country audience listening to country radio and they just stayed in America.
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But Millie says things changed around 15 years ago.
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Streaming had started. Artists here in Nashville could actually see that they were being consumed by fans internationally. So when there was a promoter in the UK saying, we're going to build a festival and we are going to ask artists to come to the UK for the first time.
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And that festival was sea to sea, country to country, which Millie helped launch in 2013.
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That story was also happening subsequently at the same time, really in Australia. And so we had this point where artists for the first time could travel, could get paid enough to do it, could see their fans and see the opportunity to build an audience internationally. But we kind of hit, I would say, almost like a snowball moment at the beginning of 2024.
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Things like Beyonce's Cowboy Carter album, artists like Shabuzzi or Post Malone coming out and changing the image of the genre.
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Suddenly we've got these mainstream moments kind of stacking up on each other. And I really think they opened a door and kind of allowed people, if you like, to give them permission to like country music.
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All of this added together to make touring outside of the US not only viable, but successful for many country artists.
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It sounds like a crazy statistic, but since 2019, we've seen 746 growth in country music ticket sales in Australia.
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746% growth. That's massive.
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That is massive. But it's also because we're seeing more artists touring.
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So where's the money from this boom? How profitable are international tours?
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Well, this is part of the problem and part of the solution. We're still convincing artists. I've got to tell you that you're asking an artist who's in one of the biggest music markets in the world with their biggest fan base to leave and go to a smaller market with a smaller fan base, and it's gonna cost them to get there. So if an artist can do that early on in their career and kind of build themselves at the same time as they're building in the us they're gonna start making money perhaps on their third tour internationally. It's gonna take a couple of tours.
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I've been speaking to Tucker Wetmore and he's about to go on tour. His first international tour outside of the us. Do you think that now is the right time?
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I think his timing is perfect. He's booked to play Australia in March. He's got a tour through the UK and Europe in April. So he's building his base early on, right when he's got this really great momentum behind him. And I really credit that team for doing that. Because he's a hot artist in the us it would be very easy for them to go, oh, we don't have time right now. But the fact that they're taking that step tells me he wants to be a global artist.
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Looking forward to 2026 and beyond. Where do we go from here?
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I think that we're just really beginning here. I see there are opportunities in markets like Mexico and Brazil, although there's not the English speaking language as such. You know, when you're in those markets, you do see fans that look a lot like an American country fan. There's real rural areas there. There's a big rodeo culture in both of those countries. So I feel like there's still a long way to go. I think it's just going to become more mainstream and it's going to be with us forever, really. This is called home.
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I'm at a songwriters round at the iconic Bluebird Cafe on the outskirts of Nashville.
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So the writers sit in the center of the room and they face each other and they trade songs and tell the stories behind the songs.
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Erica Nichols is in charge here.
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It's kind of like a good home feeling where you connect with people and I see that every night here.
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She's seen another change in the industry in recent years in the way that musicians distinguish between being a performer and a songwriter.
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It used to be in the past that there would be the artist and then the songwriter and they wouldn't necessarily meet. And now people want to be seen not just as the artist who's conveying the songs, but as the person who's super involved in how they're created and the story that they're telling.
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The National Songwriters Association International has observed that now almost all record deals start with a publishing deal first, something they've seen increase with the digital era. What does 2026 bring for the country music industry and for songwriters specifically?
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I think there's going to be a lot of more opportunity for people to see live music with songwriters. People want to be inspired. They want their hearts moved by the music. And I think that being able to bring songs out to people, I see that as being a growing market as we move into the new year.
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That's it for today's edition of Business Daily, presented and produced by me, Ellie House. To hear more episodes, search for Business Daily wherever you get your BBC podcasts. If you're the purchasing manager at a manufacturing plant, you know having a trusted partner makes all the difference.
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