Newest Roster Cuts Feel The Chill On Music Row

Phyllis Stark

Earlier this week I witnessed the distressing spectacle of one of country music’s most talented, driven and hardest-working artists having to re-audition for a spot he’d already earned on his record label’s roster. Recently, a senior executive at another label was fired by phone by a boss who, apparently unsatisfied with just whacking him, chose—unnecessarily—to do so using language designed to also degrade and humiliate him.

Both incidents reminded me just how hard and cold—even cruel—our business can sometimes be. Further proof can be found in the most recent round of roster cuts at Nashville labels.

Warner Bros. has dropped Lauren Lucas and Lane Tuner. Billy Dean has exited the Curb Records roster. And Capitol parted ways with Jennifer Hanson and Ryan Shupe & the Rubberband. The latter act was the buzz of Country Radio Seminar just two years ago.

With the largest number of labels under one roof, it’s not surprising that Sony BMG also has the largest number of dropped acts, including some surprising choices, like the departure of Jeff Bates from RCA after two albums. Rhett Akins is off BNA. And married duo the Wrights, signed jointly to RCA and Alan Jackson’s ACR imprint, are no longer affiliated with RCA.

In addition to the acts that didn’t make the transition when Sony Music Nashville merged with RCA Label Group last year, a handful of additional acts are no longer on the Columbia roster, with Trent Willmon being the most recent casualty after two albums. He joins his former Sony labelmates Patty Loveless, Rodney Crowell (a joint signing with the DMZ label), Buddy Jewell and Shelly Fairchild among the ranks of newly label-less acts.

Those artists join the previously reported tally of acts beached by Sony BMG last summer, a list that includes Diamond Rio, Jamey Johnson, Jon Randall, Jessi Alexander, Susan Haynes, Jace Everett and Brice Long.

It’s clear our business has become a numbers game, and artist development is a thing of the past. When an act fails to sell or catch on at radio in very short order, it’s game over. The same holds true even for acts like Johnson that do have radio hits but still don’t ring the cash registers at the hoped-for level.

Those are the rules of the game, and everyone knows them (or should know them) going in. But for those of us who still get more excited by music than money, and still cling to the naive hope that an artist might actually break through based on talent alone, it’s a lesson that never gets any easier to learn.