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Sorting a Massive Country Music Test: It Takes All Sorts
May 15, 2023
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The Country Radio Seminar folks have Carolyn Gilbert and I back for a new session in their CRS360 series on Wednesday this week (5/17). This webinar is taking a deeper dive into the music test we conducted for CRS and presented at their great event in Nashville back in March. CRS came up with a great title for the webinar: "The CRS Music Test: It Takes All Sorts." You can register for the free session here.
NuVoodoo got to assemble a massive national sample of over 2,800 Country fans and had them rate 716 Country titles (going back as far as 1979) as selected by the CRS research committee. We'll spare webinar attendees of the "fun" of going through the process of sorting a library test. But, with the help of two great Country programmers, Marci Braun and Brook Stephens, and with another Country music and radio vet Clay Hunnicutt, Big Machine Label Group GM, moderating, we'll discuss how to utilize the results on all those songs.
Initially screened against a perfectly-balanced sample of 18-54s in the overall population, 54% of our sample of Country music fans are Millennials (ages 27-43 in the sample). The younger eleven years of Gen X (ages 44-54) comprise 35% of the sample and the older nine years of Gen Z (ages 18-26) account for 13% of the sample. Yet, even among the youngest in the sample – Gen Z – nearly half have been Country fans for over 10 years.
Nearly half the men say they’ve become Country fans in the past 10 years, a claim made by just over a quarter of the women. While a massive majority of the sample are second-generation Country fans, it’s interesting to note that even more men than women say their parents were Country fans. Presumably, many of those men started out as rock or pop fans but gravitated to Country along the way.
More than two thirds of our sample of Country fans say they’re very interested in keeping up with new Country songs being released – even higher among men than women and higher among Millennials and Gen Xers than Gen Z.
Yet they’re also massive fans of a wide range of Country music eras we asked about using groups of artists to illustrate the era-based descriptions. The full verbiage about “Brand New Country” specified that they’d be “songs from emerging artists just getting started,” while “Classic Country” specified “artists like George Jones, Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton.” We found nearly unanimous support for Country from the “Last 10 Years,” the “Early 2000s,” as well as “90s Country.”
With all that theoretical interest in older eras, plus the results from over 2,800 Country fans about 716 Country songs selected by the CRS research committee, we’re eager to dive in and talk about how to interpret those scores and use them to guide airplay. Plus, our panel will answer your questions live during the webinar. You can register for the free session here.
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