Country Radio Likened To "Musical Strait Jacket'

Mainstream country music's growing sonic and social diversity is expanding past awards show stages, news headlines, and the Billboard sales charts.

The last bastion of the genre's traditional fanbase, terrestrial radio, is still a holdout. However, streaming portal Apple Music -- via its now two-year-old Apple Music Country Radio channel's groundbreaking programming -- is spreading diversity onto America's country radio airwaves, reports The Tennessean.

"Listening to terrestrial country radio these days is like putting on a musical straight jacket," says Hunter Kelly, host of Apple Music Country's monthly queer-centric Proud Radio program. 

Apple Music has nearly 80 million paid subscribers worldwide compared to the almost 240 million people who listen to terrestrial radio daily, nationwide. As a result, Apple Music Country has an uphill climb. Statista data shows that one out of seven terrestrial radio stations, or roughly 2,200 American stations, broadcast the genre. Also, listeners to those stations tune in for an average of 90 minutes daily, making it the nation's most popular radio format.

Recent survey data from Dr. Jada Watson noted that women accounted for just 10% of daily radio spins on Mediabase's weekly airplay reports in 2019. And over the past two decades, BIPOC artists' radio airplay has reached only five percent. 

In August 2020, Apple launched Apple Music Country, but not with the explicit desire to rectify this scenario. However, it has begun to do just that through a series of extraordinary events.

"As country music evolves and expands around the world, Apple Music Country aims to be the definitive place for every lane of an increasingly diverse genre," noted a press release sent upon the station's launch. Intriguingly, Apple Music Country launched as country music is finding itself a genre on the rise as COVID-19 has caused an incredible boom in the streaming industry.

Kelly and African-American country artist Rissi Palmer were among the first 30 hosts (alongside stars including Kelsea Ballerini and Carrie Underwood) named for the channel, with two-hour long shows, in 2020. In year one, their work began to develop alternatives for artists who are not heterosexual white males at country radio.

"Being featured on my show [Proud Radio] has already served as a point of reference for queer artists breaking into terrestrial radio airplay and charting, plus touring in Canada," notes Kelly. He cited successful 2021 campaigns in support of rural Toronto-bred Graham Scott Fleming and Vancouver-based African-American vocalist D'orjay, the Singing Shaman, highlighting the scope of reach his program has already achieved.

Similar to Palmer, who moved to Nashville in 2000 at 19 and waited a decade for success after being hindered by industry gatekeepers, is the 13-year Nashville veteran -- and now fast-rising artist -- Fancy Hagood. The once "mainstream unpalatable" openly gay singer-songwriter, via his biweekly program Trailblazers Radio, joins Kelly and Palmer as an Apple Music Country Radio host in 2022. 

"The digital realm is a blessing for marginalized artists unable to get a foot in the door [in country music] via the traditional route," says Palmer. "This isn't a new problem. In 2007, when I released my debut album, after doing radio tours for a year, because I didn't make it to a specific place, I was deemed as unviable, and country music's mainstream felt done with my career."