Country Music's Danielle Bradbery Joins Judging Team NASH Next

Danielle Brandbery

Cumulus Media has announced that Danielle Bradbery, Big Machine Records artist and winner of Season 4 of NBC’s The Voice, will join the national judging panel for Cumulus’ NASH Next 2016, a national and grassroots search for America’s newest country star. Cumulus’ NASH Next 2016 competition pays tribute to the great tradition of radio as a launch pad for our most beloved musical talent and celebrates country music, which has become the No. 1 most popular music genre, with 97 million fans.

The winner of this four-month-long national competition, announced in July by country legend Reba McEntire, will receive a recording contract with Big Machine Label Group, home to such superstars as Taylor Swift and Tim McGraw, as well as substantial exposure, commensurate with a major label release, on Cumulus radio stations nationwide. While television boasts several talent competitions, no other contest -- on any platform -- has ever offered its winners a similar opportunity for coveted radio airplay, which is the most effective medium to cultivate an artist and propel a major music career.

Sixty-eight NASH/Cumulus stations in 60 markets, including Dallas, New York, Atlanta, Detroit and Nashville, are conducting local searches of emerging artists, with additional national participation made possible by Cumulus’ digital properties and syndicated country shows. Emerging artists will first be judged by Cumulus listeners and local music industry professionals in their communities. Finalists, and the 2016 winner, will be selected by a panel of country luminaries, including Scott Borchetta, founder, president and CEO of Big Machine Label Group, the world’s No. 1 independent record label, Kix Brooks, half of Grammy-winning duo Brooks & Dunn, one of country music’s most successful duos of all time and Jay DeMarcus of chart-topping Rascal Flatts. These judges will be joined by a contest-winning listener of one of Cumulus’ stations.

Bradbery said: “I am truly honored to join some of the biggest names in country music as a national judge of Cumulus Media’s NASH Next 2016. It’s really remarkable what Cumulus is doing – helping country’s next big singer/songwriters launch their careers with an opportunity to sign with Big Machine Label Group and to get airplay on Cumulus’ radio stations across the U.S. As an artist who launched my own music career by winning NBC’s The Voice, I know from personal experience that this kind of visibility is priceless for upcoming artists.”

In the last five years, country has supplanted pop as the No. 1 most popular music genre, with 97 million fans (MRI, Fall, 2015). This is due, in part, to the fact that country has been influenced by both pop and rock styles to gain mass appeal. Cumulus’ country programming is broadcast on 82 percent of all country radio stations nationwide.