Nashville-based SiriusXM helps grow country’s booming popularity

Recent technological changes in country music have put SiriusXM’s The Highway channel at the forefront of the genre’s evolution.

It’s 10 a.m. on a late October day. Rising country superstar Bailey Zimmerman gleefully grins with an over-caffeinated smile while surrounded by Warner Music Nashville executives on a performance stage in global broadcaster SiriusXM Radio’s downtown Nashville studio outpost .

Zimmerman is receiving what could very well be the last of two-dozen plaques he’s earned from the mega-popularity of the 24 singles he’s released in the past three years.

He’s receiving the plaque not because songs like “Religiously” and “Rock and a Hard Place” have been downloaded, sold and streamed to the tune of over 25 million in sales. Instead, it’s because, via subscription-driven SiriusXM’s Pandora service, he’s been played 1 billion times.

The moment occurs after an interview with radio and television veteran Cody Alan on SiriusXM’s The Highway channel. That talk feels like more of an Instagram reel-length snapshot into a conversation between the two because the pace at which their lives are moving is best defined by a statement Zimmerman candidly makes during their discussion.

“There’s so much to learn and so much to do in so little time. All I’m trying to do is not half-a– any of it.”

‘Moving at the speed of how people consume culture’

For two decades, terrestrial radio and broadcast television fans of popular music have decried satellite radio’s “Wild West” approach to programming multiple stations with hit songs, deep cuts, studio recordings and live performances, all simultaneously available at one’s fingertips.

Because of the lack of direct advertising on the platform, a sense is at play that you’re hearing a radio personality’s hand-curated tastes rather than something specifically dictated by non-human forces.

SiriusXM’s 25 million subscribers would agree that such a uniquely bespoke listening experience is worthwhile and at the forefront of how music defines pop culture.

SiriusXM has over 150 channels in total, broadcasting a multitude of genres. Since 2010, Nashville has been the home of Channel 56, the modern country music channel The Highway. Nine months ago, SiriusXM moved its Nashville offices from Bridgestone Arena to space in the “Batman” building at 333 Commerce St.

Moving its Nashville headquarters into state-of-the-art space highlights how seriously the platform is taking how quickly demographic ages 18-49 have adapted to and are sustaining country music’s surge as America’s musical and pop cultural bellwether.

“The Highway is moving at the speed of how people consume culture and musical discovery via (interpersonal) connection is a leading how people’s appetites for consumption are trending,” Steve Blatter, SiriusXM’s senior vice president and general manager of music programming, says to The Tennessean.

Competing in a broadening, restructuring marketplace

Streaming portals and terrestrial radio stations are achieving synergy between playlists and programming at an ever-quickening pace. In 2023, Spotify and YouTube launched radio-similar features curated to balance genre, artist frequency and the mix of chosen artists versus new recommendations.

Two years prior, MusicWatch reported that the number of streaming listeners had doubled that of terrestrial radio, continuing a trend going back to 2017.

What has emerged since is a marketplace that may not driven by “music” but more by “consumable content.” That broadens the competitive reach to include digital online shorts via social media and YouTube, Amazon Music, Apple Music and Spotify as streaming platforms, terrestrial radio stations and what SiriusXM offers, coupled with its 2019-purchased streaming portal Pandora.

This system rewards hyper-performing, chart-topping artists but also fosters a thriving underbelly of performers whose ability to develop fanbases is slowly eating into the mainstream market share of other genres.

In short, the same market that developed the ability of artists like Shaboozey and Morgan Wallen to top Billboard’s all-genre Hot 100 charts for a combined 12 months has also supported Jason Aldean, Zach Bryan, Luke Combs and Post Malone, plus Kelsea Ballerini, Kane Brown, Jelly Roll, Lainey Wilson and Zimmerman, among many others.

Developing a sustainable strategy

Blatter credits SiriusXM’s successes in rock — a longtime country-friendly format — via their Alt-Nation channel for creating The Highway’s successful template. In the early 2010s, reading the blogosphere and indie circuit like tea leaves saw the channel break pop-leaning outliers like Foster the People (“Pumped Up Kicks”) and Grouplove (“Colours”) to platinum-selling success.

The Alt-Nation strategy has proved bold yet rewarding in country music’s mainstream.

Cross-mapping Nashville’s perpetually diverse and fertile minor league baseball-style farm system of acts with how blog authors and indie tastemakers frequently worked against established standards a decade ago allowed Blatter to land on everything from Florida-Georgia Line’s “Cruise” to Luke Combs’ “Hurricane” four years later.

Blatter calls a programming process that often navigates around and beyond country’s already lucrative and well-established expectations a “human and instinctual combination of art and science” that blends with over a dozen data points, including digital track sales, Pandora streams and first-hand, portal-to-user research regarding how songs are resonating with listeners.

“SiriusXM subscribers actively want their tastes engaged,” says Alan, the SiriusXM host and broadcast television and radio veteran .

He highlights how the platform’s ability to curate a passionate community within an already mega-popular yet insular one allows for a particular type of market testing that ensures that songs that become hits via SiriusXM have an assured place across all facets of country’s format and entrenchment within pop culture at-large.

‘What exists beyond their first taste of success’

Of those in Nashville worth having a conversation about how listeners respond to SiriusXM’s streaming, nobody is better equipped than SiriusXM broadcast personality Buzz Brainard. The award-nominated broadcaster and voice talent (he has worked for Fox, the Disney Channel and the Travel Channel in his four-decade career) has worked at SiriusXM for over a decade.

Hundreds of SiriusXM The Highway fans have flooded Lower Broadway’s Margaritaville bar for Brainard-hosted Friday evening, mini-concert-driven happy hours for nearly a decade.

“I receive the most-instant kind of feedback on country’s growth,” jokes the host about emceeing those festivities.

Brainard, 62, is a Michigan native old enough to understand the transformational power of what SiriusXM is accomplishing in Nashville. On the floor of their new studio’s performance suite, a marker made of wood from the Ryman Auditorium’s stage across the street is inlaid and points north to country music’s Mother Church. Like country music and its roots as a culture and genre, the Ryman is nearly 10 times older than SiriusXM.

A mix of honesty that defines the future of what “three chords and the truth” looks like is happening next door to where that notion was birthed.

“Accepting that we have the most extensive potential reach of any country channel on the planet means that we’re also accepting that we can expand country music’s horizon of reach,” Brainard says. “Everybody’s looking everywhere for the next big hit. However, we’re willing to find that hit artist and alongside getting them into regular rotation, we’re talking to them and attempting to help cultivate what the bigger picture of what exists beyond their first taste of success can look like.

“We’ve gone from throwing artists into a den of wolves to allowing them to have a space where they can experience some level of comfort and pleasure as they (navigate through the industry).”

Doubling down on ‘relatable music made by relatable people’

Over the past half-decade, since veteran SiriusXM host Ania Hammar and newcomer Macie Banks have been affiliated with the broadcaster, its ability to crest, then peak as a leading broadcaster highlights the value of trusting the work of curating country’s future to the hands of a diverse few in aiding the broader health of the genre’s surge.

Banks, 29, highlights that SiriusXM is cultivating a predominantly country music-defined future for her fellow millennials and Gen Z listeners where immediate and profound engagement can occur with artists who feel as if they’re breaking by the second on social media platforms.

“Relatable music made by relatable people organically exists best beyond algorithms and numbers,” she adds.

“Artists broken by The Highway now represent our format’s stadium headliners,” Hammar says about the potential for artists being “discovered” via the platform.

“Also, because our subscriber base highlights how broad the genre’s most curious fanbase has become, we’re allowed to define trends instead of chasing them.”

A boundary-pushing future

SiriusXM’s Blatter says the platform’s programming is helping to inspire the quality of the genre’s hits to reach “an all-time high.”

Over a decade of successfully platforming country’s traditional roots, modern hits and pop-ready outliers in a single format leaves the executive feeling accomplished yet motivated.

“Maintaining an open mind to the power of a diverse, well-crafted set of songs and stories allows for country’s possibilities to push every boundary.”

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