Garth Brooks: 'Country Radio Is The 800-Pound Gorilla'

Garth Brooks detailed how he hopes to expand his relationship with Amazon to embrace terrestrial country radio stations further and to protect the songwriters during an in-depth town hall session last week at the 2019 Country Radio Seminar in Nashville.

Billboard reports Brooks -- who is among the top 10 artists streamed on Amazon in any genre -- and Steve Boom, vp of Amazon Music, discussed how Amazon can stop competing with radio and learn how to partner with it in a session moderated by Melinda Newman, Billboard’s executive editor, West Coast and Nashville.

Garth Brooks

Many radio industry professionals have expressed their fear of streaming to Brooks, and the singer promises platforms like Amazon Music won’t eliminate the importance of country radio. In fact, listeners can stream over 40,000 radio stations on Amazon Echo from around the world.

“The opposite has happened from what the fear was. It brought music back into the home,” Boom explained. “It’s in your family room, it’s in your kitchen. It’s a communal listening environment and radio is a huge part of that. Tens of millions of hours of terrestrial radio is being listened to on Echo every month. We just brought radio into the home. That’s why we’ve seen such great growth of music. We’re not bound by a device.”

Brooks added, “Country radio is the 800-pound gorilla. It ain’t going anywhere. Everybody talks about the demise of radio because of streaming. What you guys got ain’t nobody else has is discovery. That’s what it’s all about.”

The country legend then proposed a radical idea for how Amazon and radio can work even more closely. Since radio plays a major role in music discovery, he suggested Amazon look into monetizing radio’s impact, such as when a listener is streaming a radio station on Amazon and wants to purchase a song, radio would share in the revenue. “Eighty-six percent of discovery is from radio, but radio doesn’t see those retail dollars,” he noted.