In 2015, before Luke Combs had broken through, his manager, Chris Kappy, gave fans a merchandise discount at concerts for showing they paid to subscribe to Spotify or Apple Music. “I was trying to push people into the digital age as quickly as I could,” he says. “And the fastest way I knew I could do it was giving them $1 off a T-shirt.”
Combs was one of the first country superstars who built his career digital-first. Though most of the recorded-music industry has been streaming-focused for over a decade, until recently country music — and its fans — have remained driven by radio play and album sales. Thanks to artists like Combs, Morgan Wallen, Zach Bryan and others, from 2019 to 2022, country audio streaming jumped 58%, according to Luminate, outpacing the industry’s 48.5% growth and increasing faster than every other genre besides Latin music. In early March, Wallen’s No. 1 album One Thing at a Time racked up 483 million audio streams in its debut week, according to Luminate — the fifth-largest streaming week ever, after albums by Drake, Taylor Swift and 21 Savage. Later that month, Combs’ Gettin’ Old hit 83.5 million streams.
“Finally! Thank God,” says Tim Foisset, senior vp of commercial partnerships for Warner Music Nashville, which represents Bryan. “The A&R’s really good right now, and it appears to be really sticky with a younger audience.”
New stars who are digital natives — and have careers rooted in the digital world — are one key reason for country’s streaming boom. Combs started out on Vine, and Kappy boosted his profile through a Facebook fan group; one of Wallen’s breakthroughs was 2020’s “Heartless,” with EDM star and social media wizard Diplo; Bryan recorded songs on his iPhone and posted them to YouTube. Whereas pop, dance and hip-hop tracks took off at streaming as early as 2011, the country tipping point from physical to digital didn’t start until roughly 2017, shortly before Wallen released his debut, If I Know Me.
“It was the perfect storm of incredible music, the younger demographic that was already gravitating to Morgan at that time and the audience shifting mediums,” says Patch Culbertson, GM and senior vp of Big Loud Records, Wallen’s label. “That rocket exploded, and he carried that audience with him. We’ve seen a massive move onto streaming.”
Another reason for the growth of country streaming is the COVID-19 pandemic, which pulled older fans and digital holdouts away from terrestrial radio and CDs. “Some of the more mature demographics of country weren’t in their cars, they weren’t going to the office, and they used that time to say, ‘OK, I’m going to figure out what streaming is all about,’” says Randy Goodman, CEO of Sony Music Nashville, which represents Combs. “And there are no more boundaries, genrewise. Kids are listening to Kendrick Lamar and to Morgan. It’s a younger demographic we’re appealing to.”
Both Sony’s Goodman and Warner’s Foisset say radio remains “incredibly important,” but add that country hits now often start on streaming, then take off at radio instead of vice versa. In 2019, Goodman explains, “the world began to change,” and country stars followed their pop, hip-hop and EDM counterparts into YouTube, TikTok and Spotify virality long before radio took notice. “From a record-company perspective, we realized we had to make these shifts,” he says.
Wallen has led this transformation: Dangerous: The Double Album racked up 3.6 billion audio streams in 2021, hitting No. 1 in overall consumption that year, outpacing Olivia Rodrigo, Drake and Adele. Last September, tracks by Wallen, Bryan and Combs hit the top 10 on Billboard’s Streaming Songs chart, the first time at least three non-holiday country songs reached the milestone. That week, 13 of the chart’s 50 songs were country; on the chart dated April 15, Wallen has three tracks, and Bryan’s “Something in the Orange” is No. 14. And there’s more to come: Foisset notes that some of country’s biggest young stars, including Cole Swindell, Bailey Zimmerman and Jelly Roll, are scheduled to release albums in 2023.
Country streaming-music fans are unusually dedicated. According to a new Digital Media Association survey, they spent about 1,270 hours per year listening to music annually, about 1.6 times more than country music fans who do not stream. Which is not surprising to Emily Cohen Belote, principal music curator for Amazon Music. The service has emphasized country for years through Country Heat, including a playlist and an online radio station and hit 13 billion streams in 2021. “We’ve been doing this for a while, and it’s not just a flash in the pan,” she says. “Country music is happening in streaming in a really big way.”
