Give The People What They Want: Nashville’s Changing Music Business

I recently interviewed David Nail, who has recently posted his first-ever Top 30 single on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart with “Red Light.” As we wrapped up our chat, I asked if he was excited about the impending release of his debut album, I’m About to Come Alive, on Aug. 18. “I’ll just be excited to actually have an album out,” he admitted. His rueful chuckle spoke volumes about the long journey the Kennett, Mo., native had taken just to see an actual CD with his name on it on an actual shelf in an actual store.

I’m About to Come Alive, you see, is not really Nail’s debut. No, that was the self-titled album he recorded for Mercury Nashville in 2002. The company sent out advances—they were ubiquitous, as I recall—yet it never saw the light of day. A single, “Memphis,” stalled at No. 52, and he was unceremoniously dropped from the label.

Unlike most newcomers who get canned in this manner, Nail lived to fight another day: In fact, he signed in 2007 with MCA Nashville, one of Mercury’s sister companies under the Universal Music Nashville umbrella. The title cut from I’m About to Come Alive didn’t click at radio, but he got a second chance this time—and the success of “Red Light” appears to have made the album release a fait accompli. (It’s available for pre-order at Amazon.com, usually a very good sign.)

It’s still a great moment of pride and accomplishment when an artist goes through one of Nashville’s most cherished rituals: Buying one’s own album on the release date, an activity that’s both a symbol of country music’s ethos (or mythos) that the artists and fans are on an equal footing and an old-fashioned superstition. But by the time Nail has the chance to finally do that, the ritual will have long since been made less relevant than it once was. That’s because of something that didn’t exist in 2002, when Nail’s first single was worked to radio: the iTunes store. Money has been changing hands for David Nail’s music since April 28, 2008, when “I’m About to Come Alive” was made available for download. Fans have been able to vote with their wallets in a way they weren’t able to do in 2002, years after the physical single format had largely been abandoned in its CD, cassette or vinyl forms.

The popularization of single-serving download sales has corrected a cognitive dissonance that seemed especially glaring in a city that has never been known to leave money on the table. For several years music fans who wanted to give a record label their money to buy an artist’s music weren’t allowed to do so—unless, of course, that artist managed to secure a CD release for a full album and the fan had the faith to shell out as much as $20 a pop. For that to happen, a single had to reach at least the 20s on the Billboard chart—a standard that more or less remains intact today. If not, an album might be left to molder in a vault (or, more recently, on a hard drive) until perhaps someday an exhaustive Bear Family excavation produces an eight-disc box set that German listeners will no doubt enjoy.

This dynamic was bewildering to me when I first started learning about the peculiar way the music business works in Nashville, but it does—or at least did—make financial sense. Recording, the way it’s done around here, is relatively inexpensive. Music City’s famed session musicians are trained to get it right in one or two takes, keeping studio time to a bare minimum. That leaves marketing and manufacturing as the major expenses, and recording costs are easily written off as an acceptable loss if the marketing doesn’t work and the manufacturing proves unnecessary.

Works for the labels, but for fans and artists alike it’s a pain in the ass. Many artists have in recent years found that the only way to actually offer their fans a product is to move to an independent label. Terri Clark fans will get to hear her first album in four years, The Long Way Home, next month—but only after she asked to be released from her major-label contract. The talented Amy Dalley spent years signed to Curb Records, which released single after single but never an album—but now that she’s independent you can order her It’s Time album at your leisure. I’ve heard unreleased albums by all sorts of artists, from seasoned veterans to total unknowns, which made it to the marketing stage (including issuing advances to critics) but not to the manufacturing stage.

But the meaning of “manufacturing” is changing. With every day that passes, the process of assembling a CD package to be shipped to physical stores becomes less and less relevant. In its place is the relatively cheap and easy process of converting a track to MP3 (or in the case of the iTunes store, AAC) files and offering it for sale digitally. It’s not as lucrative as strongarming customers to pay $20 for the one song they actually wanted to own, but that day is done.

There are hopeful signs that labels are beginning to adapt to this reality. It’s recently become fashionable to introduce new artists with digital EPs—four-to-six-song packages from Trailer Choir, Kate & Kacey Coppola, Emily West, Whitney Duncan, Mallary Hope and other up-and-comers ensure that at least 15 to 25 minutes or so of music exists in the marketplace to prove they once walked the earth. (The tack of offering a full album as a digital-only release, as with recent albums by Jennifer Hanson and Jypsi, thus far seems less promising; still, fans of those acts at least have a way to hear their work.)

The Internet has given artists new leverage in many ways. As newcomer Jesse Lee explained recently to the New York Times, the art of building a fan base now includes personal interaction that the act can initiate themselves—and the results can be measured by digital sales, a much clearer indication of fan demand than radio play. “My iTunes sales have far exceeded my chart position on radio, so if it’s not radio play, what is it?” said Lee, whose “It’s a Girl Thing” has yet to trouble radio’s Top 40. “I answer back every person who writes me. I’m active on Twitter. People are finding me through YouTube.”

So what’s the endgame here? CDs will eventually die out just as cassettes and eight-tracks did before them (the surprisingly resilient vinyl is another matter). At some point CD sales will fall to a level beyond which it will not make financial sense to manufacture them anymore. Country will be among the last genres to reach that point, thanks to a fan base that is older and far less net-savvy than most—but make no mistake, that point will be reached. It’s my hope that when that happens, no artist will again need be subjected to the indignity of seeing an album shelved indefinitely.

Eventually the album format itself will also die, an eventuality that—oddly enough—suits the Nashville way of music-making just fine. Rock artists go into the studio, make an album, release it, go on tour, then repeat the cycle. Major-label artists in Nashville (excepting heavyweights like Kenny Chesney) write, tour and record more or less year-round. Sugarland’s Jennifer Nettles recently encountered voice problems that forced the duo to scrap several shows because she had been singing in the studio during off days from touring. It seems counterintuitive, but that’s just how we do around here. The process of making music goes on all the time, one way or another (except for December, when the town collectively ceases all activity—but that’s another story).

Eventually we’re likely to see country artists not just recording and performing all year but releasing new music all year as well. The gigantic profits of yore won’t be possible in a world that revolves around 99-cent or $1.29 downloads, but the music will reach the people. Perhaps the labels will dig into the vaults and someday all those unreleased albums will be made available at last. Hell, maybe even 2002’s David Nail. Why not?