{"id":162311,"date":"2025-05-29T09:10:34","date_gmt":"2025-05-29T13:10:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/2025\/05\/29\/how-country-artist-managers-max-out-the-experience-at-cma-fest-2\/"},"modified":"2025-05-29T09:10:34","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T13:10:34","slug":"how-country-artist-managers-max-out-the-experience-at-cma-fest-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/2025\/05\/29\/how-country-artist-managers-max-out-the-experience-at-cma-fest-2\/","title":{"rendered":"How Country Artist Managers Max Out the Experience at CMA\u00a0Fest"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\tHundreds of country artists, from superstars to new aspirants, will spend June\u00a05-8 saying thanks to their fan base and working to build new audiences when an expected 90,000 daily visitors attend CMA Fest in Nashville.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut for most of those artists, there\u2019ll be one or more people at their side who are likewise invested in making the most of the annual event. Managers benefit when their artists expand their fan bases and increase consumption, driving up ticket prices and boosting merchandise sales.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tFoiled Again: Brad Paisley Partners With Fender to Revive a Lost\u00a0Guitar\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3><\/div>\n

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\n\tThus, those managers are focused on maxing out the connection their acts make with consumers during CMA Fest, but they have other interests during the festival, too: evaluating the market, networking with industry contacts and checking out other artists they might want to sign.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI can go around town and see 20 things in a day instead of having to take 20 days to see 20 things,\u201d says Play It Again Music GM Cade Price<\/strong>, who manages Dylan Marlowe<\/strong>, Faith Hopkins<\/strong> and Slater Nalley<\/strong>. \u201cIt\u2019s not like we\u2019re trying to go sign anything and everything, but it\u2019s CMA Fest. I think we do ourselves a disfavor if we don\u2019t go out there and see. You just never know who you\u2019re going to stumble onto.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFans have a good idea of the artists they may see. Nightly concerts at Nissan Stadium are one of the primary attractions for CMA Fest, an annual event since 1972 that has generated a summer network TV special for more than 20\u00a0years. Keith Urban<\/strong>, Cody Johnson<\/strong>, Rascal Flatts<\/strong>, Jason Aldean<\/strong>, Scotty McCreery<\/strong>, Luke Bryan<\/strong> and Blake Shelton<\/strong> are among the nearly 30 artists slated for the stadium main stage this year.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut while the football field garners the most attention, some of the most important work of CMA Fest occurs during the day at nine smaller festival stages, plus a bundle of unofficial adjunct performance spots. Those platforms help new and developing artists, in particular, showcase their talents to consumers in their target audience who may not otherwise be fully aware of them. This year\u2019s participants on those building stages include Bryce Leatherwood<\/strong>, Charlie Worsham<\/strong>, Cooper Alan<\/strong>, Crowe Boys<\/strong>, Hudson Westbrook<\/strong>, Madeline Edwards<\/strong> and Tyler Braden<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tWhy This Once-Gimmicky ACM Awards Category Is Having a\u00a0Moment\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3><\/div>\n

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\n\tIt\u2019s a massive opportunity for fans to experience artists they don\u2019t know well and, in turn, a prime chance for artist managers to get a big-picture assessment of country\u2019s most avid fans.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s always kind of fun to observe the people that come in and get a good idea of what the country fan base looks like at that point in time,\u201d says Champ Management founder Matt Musacchio<\/strong>, who counts Vincent Mason<\/strong>, Jessie James Decker<\/strong>, Dawson Anderson<\/strong>, Abbie Callahan <\/strong>and Sons of Habit<\/strong> as clients. \u201cYou see how the fan base differs from artist to artist and stage to stage, depending on who\u2019s playing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tUnlike their artists, most managers are able to blend in with the crowd, and it provides them a great opportunity to move across the Downtown Nashville footprint. Much of their day is spent shepherding their acts through their schedules, and they\u2019re bound to encounter other executives and musicians they already know backstage. But most have some breakaway moments when they can check out other performances and new amenities, where they\u2019re likely to run across industry contacts.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor me personally, it was massive,\u201d says Los Angeles-based Type\u00a0A Management founder Alex Lunt<\/strong>, who attended his first CMA Fest in 2024 with Dasha<\/strong>. \u201cIt was an amazing opportunity to really just tap in with the entire country community because you have everybody. You even have all the coastal label execs there. They\u2019re all going to come to CMA Fest.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Subscribe to\u00a0Billboard Country Update<\/a>, the industry\u2019s must-have source for news, charts, analysis and features.\u00a0Sign up for free delivery<\/a>\u00a0every week.<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/figure>\n

\n\tThe scouting gives a better sense of the opportunities, too. That\u2019s particularly valuable as their artists return year after year and their goals change. Lunt\u2019s first experience a year ago, when Dasha\u2019s single \u201cAustin\u201d was breaking out, was an overload.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLast year, we were just kind of like a fire hose to the mouth and saying yes to everything,\u201d he notes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDasha played two songs on the spotlight stage at the stadium, the first time she had performed for an audience of 50,000. But she also packed some of the smaller adjunct events in Nashville bars. For this year, they focused more on branding, creating a line-dance experience at the Whiskey Bent Saloon.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe\u2019ll have her Coyote Ugly<\/em> moment, perform on the bar and do a couple numbers,\u201d Lunt notes. \u201cWe just wanted to give her her statement, and we\u2019re calling it \u2018Dashville\u2019 because her whole tour is basically called \u2018Welcome to Dashville.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor managers with years of CMA Fest history, every iteration brings new perspective on the format and their clients.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Kashus<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tWhy a Wave Of New Country Artists Are Singing the\u00a0Blues\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3><\/div>\n

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\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s fun to see the artist\u2019s career grow incrementally with what they\u2019re doing at CMA Fest every year,\u201d Musacchio says. \u201cIt\u2019s always, I think, a good gauge of how the last year has been and where things are going, and kind of where the artist sits in the grand scheme of things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s also a great motivator for manager and artist. The large turnout from the country audience invariably reminds participants how many consumers are willing to invest in the genre. But it also offers a physical reminder of how many artists are competing for those listeners. Hopefully, both the manager and the artist find motivation in that part of the experience.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt makes you think about how much new music is being released each week,\u201d Price says. \u201cThat\u2019s allowing us to see that and gets our minds going: \u2018What do we need to be doing to stand out in the crowd?’\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Aller \u00e0 la source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hundreds of country artists, from superstars to new aspirants, will spend June\u00a05-8 saying thanks to their fan base and working to build new audiences when an expected 90,000 daily visitors attend CMA Fest in Nashville. But for most of those artists, there\u2019ll be one or more people at their side who are likewise invested in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-162311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musique","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}