If you follow the business side of country music at all, Seth England’s name is not new to you. As CEO of Big Loud — the Nashville-born label and management company behind Morgan Wallen, HARDY, ERNEST, and Florida Georgia Line — he has had a front-row seat to everything that has shifted in Music City over the last several years. Billboard sat down with him this week for their On the Record podcast, and honestly, it’s one of the more candid conversations I’ve seen come out of a major label executive in a while. You can find the full piece over at Billboard.
The setup is familiar to anyone covering this space. Country music has taken over the charts, and the coastal labels have finally noticed. Capitol Records Nashville, the relaunched Lost Highway imprint, Atlantic Outpost — all of them set up shop in Music City within the last year alone. England doesn’t shy away from what that means for homegrown labels trying to hold onto their artists. He’s been through the boom from the beginning and he’s not pretending the new competition doesn’t exist.
What he says about fan loyalty is something I’ve been saying here at CountryMusicNewsBlog.com for years — country fans are built different. England put it well, noting that roughly 10 percent of music fans are the ones who actively seek music out, and that country has the highest percentage of those engaged, invested listeners compared to any other genre. That’s not an accident. That’s what the format has always been built on.
The Morgan Wallen section is worth the read on its own. England talked about what makes the creative relationship work, and his answer was simple: Wallen still listens. “He hasn’t had any of those moments. Not one,” England said, describing artists who stop collaborating once the success hits. That kind of trust between an artist and their team is rarer than people realize, and it doesn’t happen by accident.
But the line that stopped me was the Garth Brooks comment. England said he believes there is “a certain someone out there in our genre whose music is not on all platforms” and that when that changes, it will be “a massive, supercharged moment” — one that could reshape the genre for three or four years due to streaming algorithms alone. He did not say Garth’s name, but he didn’t have to. That’s a bold thing to put on record, and he’s probably right.
The podcast episode is free to listen to and worth your hour. Some of the written interview is behind the Billboard Pro wall, but the conversation itself is available on YouTube and other podcast platforms.