Whiskey Riff’s unscrupulous journalistic practices are disturbing, and they’re now being exacerbated by deciding that political coverage also needs to be part of the Whiskey Riff diet.
There is a positive sign that perhaps Randall King is finally getting his due. It only took half a decade and two album releases, but Warner Music is finally promoting a proper single to country radio.
The singer, songwriter, and performer originally from Texas is no stranger to the SiriusXM format. In 2022, Sweeney launched “Sunny Side Up” as the 6 am to 12 pm show on the Outlaw’s sister station, Willie’s Roadhouse.
You’re about a week too late yesterday to try and make clickbait hay off the “Hawk Tuah Girl,” but that didn’t stop Rolling Stone from publishing an embarrassing piece of journalistic fellatio late last week
It’s not just that the company has laid off all its journalists and editors. It’s that the work of scores of writers over many years—tens of thousands of articles in total—are now gone, and unlikely to return.
The country music radio landscape in the “Live Music Capital of the World” has just gone through a major shakeup, with the legendary KOKE going fully online, and a new radio station launching catering specifically to Texas country.
Once again, AI as replacement for actual journalism spectacularly fails. This time the culprit is X/Twitter’s “Grok” tool, which the social media giant recently started using to generate news stories native to the application.
Just like many of the other details in the reporting on Beyoncé and country music, the proclamations that country radio initially rejected Beyoncé’s singles are verifiably false. On the contrary, country radio embraced “Texas Hold “Em.”
Allowing an easy way for podcasts to promote tracks, albums, and performers while fairly compensating them for their art seems completely intuitive and well past due. Yet here in 2024, we’re still waiting.
In 2024, the 2nd Annual Key Western Fest in Key West, Florida did something quite remarkable. In an environment where the country music industry continues to struggle booking women, they booked a festival entirely of women.
If your pastime is crashing nerdy little music websites, then you’ve probably caught wind about the bloodletting at the indie rock-centric review site Pitchfork this week, and how it’s being folded into GQ.
This week, the Tyler Childers song “In Your Love” appeared at #50 on the MediaBase country radio chart, as well as #50 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart, marking the first appearance for Childers on either index.
With outlets now hiring dedicated staff to cover celebrity music stars, it creates a dilemma over objectivity, and runs the risk of widening the gulf between music’s haves and have nots.
A good barometer for where country music has been over the last few years, and where country music might be headed is the wild path of Toby Keith’s song “Don’t Let The Old Man In.”
Country music has a lot of famous Hanks, but who knew that the legendary actor Tom Hanks was such a fan of them? Hanks may be his last name not first, but Tom’s appreciation for country music apparently runs deep.
The 176-page TBI Report verifies that the TBI was not in a position to impartially investigate what happened that night. A Justice Department inquiry similar to other police-involved killings seems necessary.
After taking some time out of the spotlight to fight the Cancer, Keith is now starting to battle back and appear in public again. But don’t expect a bunch of new songs from him anytime soon.
Before Turnpike went on indefinite hiatus in 2019, they were doing quite well for many independent acts, but were also meandering along in the effort to really spark national attention for themselves. Now the game has completely changed.
A couple of really important moves have been made recently in the country radio space that could have implications on the format moving forward. But the two moves spearheaded by big country legends from the 90s take two different directions.
Though what Garth Brooks said is 100% correct and it’s patently obvious to everyone, the fallacy of radio independence is what persists because so many are afraid to speak about it publicly.
“I was so humbled when Tyler asked me to record the song,” says King. “And then earlier this year he surprised my fans and joined me on stage in Lexington, KY.”
Platforms like Twitter and Tik-Tok have been instrumental to the rise of artists outside of the musical industrial complex by connection them directly with fans, and circumventing the need for major labels or mass media to help performers find a sustainable audience in many instances.
With every single piece of recorded music now right at your fingertips, spending time reading professional reviews may seem silly. But the problem is that you have every single piece of recorded music right at your fingertips, which means we’ve gone from not enough options, to way too many.
The Editor-in-Chief of Rolling Stone has now been accused of doctoring the story to overplay the angle of governmental overreach, and to hide the true reason James Gordon Meek’s home was raided, namely that Meeks was under federal investigation for being in possession of images depicting child sex abuse.