“Whiskey Riff” Criticized for Predatory Behavior Against Independent Podcast
On October 23rd, the 3rd annual Two Step Inn festival in Georgetown, TX announced its 2025 lineup with headliners Sturgill Simpson, Alan Jackson, Miranda Lambert, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. The two-day festival is now one of numerous country music “megafestivals” across the United States that instead of relying on the big names of the mainstream, books country legends and independent country performers to fill out their rosters.
Independent names like Kaitlin Butts, Noeline Hoffmann, The Droptines, and Braxton Keith help fill out the 2025 Two Step Inn lineup. These megafestival events are important because they’ve proven the economic viability of music that country radio and awards shows don’t pay attention to. Tens of thousands of patrons from around the country flock to them.
The Two Step Inn is promoted by C3 Presents, which is an Austin-based promotional company that is owned 51% by Live Nation—the biggest live music promoter in the world, and the owner of Ticketmaster. C3 Presents also promotes the independent country megafestival called Railbird in Kentucky every June, which has been happening since 2019. They also own the FairWell Festival in Redmond, Oregon, which happened in 2023 and 2024.
As Saving Country Music reported in 2023, though these corporate-owned megafestival offer excellent opportunities for independent country fans to see many of their favorite performers all in one place, they are also squeezing out locally and regionally-owned festivals. This has become an increasing problem since the pandemic as big promoters see the money to be made off of independent country music.
If you could draw a parallel to what C3 Presents is doing in the country music media business, it would be attributed to the news, entertainment, and apparel website Whiskey Riff. As the online music publishing space has seen severe contraction in the last couple of years—including big layoffs at NPR, CMT letting go its entire editorial staff, and even landmark review site Pitchfork scaling back to a skeleton crew—Whiskey Riff has seen dramatic growth by working sports, outdoor, lifestyle, and general viral content into their country music coverage. They’re like the Barstool Sports of country music.
When it was announced on March 9th, 2023 that the owner of the Grand Ole Opry—Opry Entertainment Group—was purchasing a minority stake in Whiskey Riff, the concern was they were taking an independently-owned media outlet, and bringing it under corporate control. Though assurances were given that nothing would really change and the outlet’s autonomy would remain, these deals always change media outlets since now there is another entity expecting growth from their investment.
In truth, Whiskey Riff was already a problematic actor in the world of country music journalism before the Opry Entertainment Group investment. Their buzzy articles loaded with ads diminished the quality of country music coverage, and shaded out the work from other outlets with higher quality standards. That said, upon occasion Whiskey Riff would produce more quality content, and the outlet was integral in piledriving interest in independent artists that much of the mainstream was ignoring.
When the C3 Presents/LiveNation festival Two Step Inn announced their 2025 lineup, many periodicals in the country music space dutifully published articles promoting the lineup as a news story. Strangely though, Whiskey Riff was silent, even though they’re the outlet that has the manpower to cover most all of these announcements, and had covered Two Step Inn announcements in the past. It was only about a week later when Whiskey Riff ran a story titled, “As Other Festivals Are Struggling, Two Step Inn Seems To Just Keep Getting Better Every Year.”
Most notably, looking beneath the header image for the Two Step Inn article, it was marked as “Sponsored” by Two Step Inn. In other words, as opposed to posting about the festival pro bono, Whiskey Riff was paid by Two Step Inn/C3 Presents to post basically the same article scores of other outlets did for free, including Saving Country Music. For the record, SCM has also attended Two Step Inn for the past two years and covered it on-site with articles, Instagram posts, and in-depth recaps.
It’s problematic enough that the entity that is working to crowd out independent country festivals throughout the United States in C3 Presents/Live Nation is taking their advertising budget, and instead of spending it on independent outlets struggling to make it—and that have a history of offering in-depth coverage for this festival specifically—spends their money on the media outlet that is crowding out those independent outlets.
But to add insult to injury, consider the title of the Whiskey Riff article promoting the Two Step Inn: “As Other Festivals Are Struggling, Two Step Inn Seems To Just Keep Getting Better Every Year.”
The reason so many festivals are struggling is specifically due to C3 Presents, Live Nation, and their deep pockets outspending local and regional promoters for talent. If necessary, C3 Presents can lose money for 3-5 years to establish a foothold in a region while most independent promoters must make money each year to survive. This is the reason we are seeing so many independent festivals canceling across the United States, even as the growth and market share for independent country increases.
Of course, none of this is explained in the Whiskey Riff article. After all, C3 Presents paid for it, meaning you won’t get any objective scrutiny of the lineup or any of the business practices of C3 Presents.
All of this leads up to the last few weeks, and what appears to be a brazen new direction for Whiskey Riff. As Saving Country Music reported back in August, Whiskey Riff has aggressively moved into the political space, and sometimes in deceptive ways. The outlet will regularly post old articles as new articles over and over, especially for viral political content and historical retrospectives.
On the Presidential election night in the United States and ever since, Whiskey Riff has become even more brazen with its political coverage, along with leaning even more into clickbait-style gossip articles, especially surrounding the breakup of Zach Bryan and Brianna Chickenfry. As an example, one article headline teased, “‘Ohhh Boy The Tea I Have’ – Brianna Chickenfry On Why Charles Wesley Godwin Doesn’t Follow Zach Bryan Anymore.“
These types of articles pitting performers against each other and broadcasting their private matters has drawn the ire of many in the country music community, including the owners of a podcast called Western Grunge Tapedeck whose slogan is “Do your part to support independent artists.” One of the owner’s personal X/Twitter accounts named Marlboro Man’s Tapedeck began posting memes and criticisms of Whiskey Riff.
Here are some examples of the posts coming from Marlboro Man’s Tapedeck supplied to Saving Country Music by Whiskey Riff.
After this activity, Whiskey Riff purchased the website domain for Western Grunge Tapedeck that was similar to their social media handles and podcast, westerngrungetd.com. Whiskey Riff then redirected the URL to Whiskey Riff‘s merch store. As the situation escalated, Whiskey Riff also purchased westerngrungetapedeck.com.
This set off a social media firestorm on X/Twitter, with many independent podcasts, media outlets, influencers, as well as some journalists coming to Western Grunge Tapedeck’s defense. This in turn has sent Whiskey Riff on a campaign where they have blocked dozens, perhaps hundreds of accounts, including ones from long-running country outlets such as Farce The Music for standing up for Western Grunge Tapedeck.
“At Western Grunge Tapedeck, we cover independent artists. We have a lot of great guests on the show that are independent artists, and that’s our thing. It’s always been about the music and the stories of the independent artists out there. With that comes beefing with the corporate country side as a lot of people do,” co-owner Brennan of Western Grunge Tapedeck tells Saving Country Music.
When pressed about why Western Grunge Tapedeck didn’t secure ownership of the web domains attributed to the podcast previously, Brennan explained that as a podcast and not a news outlet, this wasn’t a priority, and they primarily ran things through their social media properties. It was while trying to secure their web domains when they found out Whiskey Riff had purchased their URL. Western Grunge Tapedeck started as a podcast in January, and has since posted around 65 episodes.
“The only reason we found it was this week is because we were setting up our LLC and owner shares, and this is when we started looking into websites,” Brennan explains. “We have a business plan. We want to become a record label within the next three years, launch our own music venue within the next five years. We have people committed to investing in those things. The podcast is a really good tool to get the music out there and start networks and conversations.”
As for the response that Western Grunge Tapedeck has seen from supporters, Brennan says, “It’s been pretty powerful to watch how many people stick up and stand up for us who also enjoy independent music artists. It’s been pretty inspiring.”
Saving Country Music reached out to Whiskey Riff to potentially interview them about the issue with Western Grunge Tapedeck, along with the sponsored post about Two Step Inn and the more political direction the outlet has taken recently. Associate editor and General Council for Whiskey Riff, Aaron Ryan responded,
Western Grunge has been coming at us for a while. They were constantly trolling on our social pages, but we decided not to engage because we really had no idea who they were. When we looked them up, we noticed the domain wasn’t owned and was able to be purchased. Obviously there was no “stealing” of the domain – because they didn’t own it in the first place.
They obviously wanted a reaction from us with their incessant trolling of our posts. Seems that if the domain were so important to them they would have bought it for themselves to begin with. We’re happy to talk with them if they’d like, but so far nobody has reached out to us. In the meantime, we’re working on redirecting the domains from our website, because it was never about the traffic for us.
The purchase of the Western Grunge Tapedeck domains by Whiskey Riff touched a nerve because it’s symbolic of a much bigger issue facing independent music. As big corporate entities are working to secure their positions in music meant to be grassroots, it’s shading out many long standing and upstart outlets, similar to what we’re seeing in the festival space.
Whatever legitimate beef Whiskey Riff can sow with Western Grunge Tapedeck, it’s a David vs. Goliath scenario where a massive company is punching down on a upstart outlet, setting a bad precedent that could lock out new voices and fresh perspectives in an ever-crowded, and increasingly difficult media space to survive in.
November 18, 2024 @ 12:45 pm
Screw Whiskey Riff
November 18, 2024 @ 12:50 pm
This is a good article. You could easily take a view that Whiskey Riff were in there rights to mess with some of their twitter trolls a bit, and that scooping up those domains was a prank, that could ultimately bring good publicity to both WR and WGTD.
But the way you frame it in the larger issues, really is the important point here. The way WR seem to be unscrupulous in their desire for revenue, driving traffic to trashy, and repetitive articles means that you simply cannot assume the best with them. A quick joke, and public make up with WGTD would probably have been a positive PR move for them (and WRTD), but the way they continue to act on this matter shows that they have no plans to be anything less than a bully.
Bravo for highlighting this, especially as I know some of these Indie Country Twitter influencers have at times been critical of this blog too. This is the high road.
November 18, 2024 @ 2:18 pm
The irony here is some of the folks rising up to defend Western Grunge Tapedeck have taken me to task over the years as well, and usually for silly or outright false things. Anyone who comes here on a regular basis knows where my heart is, and how much effort I expend supporting independent music. But if you’re in the media, you need to have a thick skin, and you can’t take petty things personally. I say that fully know that I’ve gotten bent out of shape over silly stuff over the years.
Not that anyone’s asking my opinion, but if I were in Whiskey Riff’s shoes, I would have just ignored it, or maybe, actually listened to people’s criticisms. Whiskey Riff has always been turds and posted buzzy articles. But I think a strong case can be made that over the last few weeks and months, they’ve taken it way too far. They need to get back to the heart of their concept. But if you have financial goals you must meet in Q4, maybe you look past your scruples and post yet another articles about the Hawk Tuah Girl, or the Zach Bryan breakup. Then all of a sudden you’re in a vicious cycle where you’re burning through street cred just to get clicks, and you leverage your future for present-day gains.
As for Western Grunge Tapedeck, if someone tried to squash me early on, I would hope others would rise up in my defense. I was in their shoes 17 years ago when I started, talking shit on pop country because I was pissed off and trolling the big outlets at the time like CMT. I’m in my 40s now. We need young, fresh voices and perspectives to come in and help carry this thing on.
November 18, 2024 @ 1:29 pm
Trig, I have an honest question, so don’t take it as a personal criticism. You call out Whiskey Ruff for reposting old “news” like the John Rich story. But what about the stale links I see on SCM’s home page every day — Charley Pride’s death, Jason Aldean vs. Zac Brown, etc.? Is there any reason that these and other old pieces get recycled like this?
November 18, 2024 @ 2:05 pm
Good question.
There is a big difference between taking an old story verbatim and reposting it with a new date on it as if it’s never appeared before, and an ad for an old article in the sidebar for a website on the desktop platform.
For the record, Whiskey Riff is not alone in this reposting practice. Unfortunately, a lot of websites do this, but none that follow a basic set of editorial practices that are considered reputable. You would never see this from CNN, or Fox News. You won’t see it here either. I might have a retrospective or address an old topic with new information. But the new article will be its own animal.
As far as those ads for old articles in the right sidebar of SCM, long story short, it’s dead space, so you might as well put something there, just in case someone is new here, sees something that interests them, and they want to click on it and read. I hate advertising. I think it’s ugly. Unfortunately though, I have to make money or the lights go out. I don’t include any ads in the reading space and put it all in the margins. On mobile, people never see those ads unless they keep scrolling past the content. On Desktop, there is a bunch of dead space to the right, and so those ads are there to help fill it.
November 18, 2024 @ 1:44 pm
every time these guys come across my timeline it’s them talking about Jelly Roll or Post Malone. I’m losing faith that they care about country music at all.
November 18, 2024 @ 1:48 pm
Yes Whiskey Riff has their issues, but for Western Grunge TD trying to build a legitimate platform and have this big business plan…the memes they are posting doesn’t help make them seem legitimate. I haven’t been as active on country music Twitter lately but was not familiar with them until this weekend or knew they had a podcast.
November 18, 2024 @ 2:20 pm
Streisand Effect. If Whiskey Riff would have ignored them, it would have mattered little. Now Western Grunge Tapedeck has dramatically raised their profile, sold a bunch of merch, and gone up against the big bad Whiskey Riff. This is the kind of marketing you can’t pay for.
November 19, 2024 @ 9:20 pm
Western grunge tape deck are extremely tongue-in-cheek Twitter heads. I think they had a bunch of funny Twitter stuff long before they had an actual podcast- their schtick is basically to act like obsessed superfans of red dirt and stuff.. It’s meant to be over the top. It’s so deeply Twitter that it’s hard to explain why it’s funny, but it’s definitely not a “serious” podcast or account. They have fans because they are funny.
People rise up to defend them because they’ve been kind of part of the community over there on country music Twitter for a while (no idea what it’s like now, I’ve been off Twitter for a few months now).
It’s a really stupid scene for whiskey riff to tangle with- that cluster of accounts is really tight with each other and I’m not surprised that there was a pile on after risky whiff did their risky wiff thing.
November 18, 2024 @ 2:45 pm
If Whiskey Riff was a college student, it would be one of those lacrosse players who rapes someone behind a dumpster.
November 18, 2024 @ 3:02 pm
This article introduced me to two new independent country podcasts/sites… Was wondering if someone could make a list of websites similar to SCM to help publicize them?
November 19, 2024 @ 5:34 pm
Trigger:
I know you don’t want to give free pub to your competition, but this is a worthwhile question. I reply on your site for news, album reviews, really the entire shaping of my musical universe. If there are any other “Triggers” out there on whom you rely or whose content you consider reputable, I’d love to know.
November 19, 2024 @ 5:56 pm
Sorry, just seeing this comment. Maybe I’ll do an article running down some good alternatives at some point. Part of the problem is that so many of the good ones are gone or have scaled back.
One website that I think is doing a great job is Saddle Mountain Post. Really great music features and a clean format. No Depression is of course the OG, though now that they focus mostly on their quarterly print publications, there’s not a lot online. Country Music People out of the UK is another great one, but again, print with PDF subscription.
I’ve also been generally impressed with Holler, though as a UK-based publication, some of their takes seem to be way off. But they do some good, actual music journalism over there.
Farce The Music is fun, but mostly memes.
That’s a good start.
November 19, 2024 @ 7:25 pm
+1 to Saddle Mountain Post
Also they just shut down but for the last few years the Honky Tonk Times was an amazing print publication run by superfans with articles by independent country artists. You might still be able to get some back issues while they sell off old inventory.
If you get into Gothic country at all, check out the Swedish Embassy of Gothic country blog. It’s the main place to learn about that stuff right now.
November 18, 2024 @ 3:09 pm
Risky Whiff sucks. That is all.
November 18, 2024 @ 3:29 pm
Western Grunge Tapedeck simply needs to file a UDRP complaint against Whiskey Riff to secure the domain names on trademark infringement grounds. They shouldn’t pay Whiskey Riff for the domains. Just hire a lawyer who can prepare the complaint on the cheap.
November 18, 2024 @ 3:42 pm
I don’t pay attention to Whiskey Riff but I can see why NPR had massive layoffs. For the past 20 years I would occasionally listen on the radio but for the past few years, including the last time I tuned in a week ago, it’s always something about gender identity and expression, abortion, or outright left-leaning news.
I am aware that they have always been left-leaning and that was never a problem, it’s that no straight man cares to hear a rambling lecture about someone’s gender identity – it’s like overhearing some dunderhead prattle on about the dreams they had last night. It’s just something within your own head that no one else cares about.
November 18, 2024 @ 4:26 pm
The Dems way overplayed their hand on the gender thing. And it wasn’t much of a hand to begin with — DJT still got 45 percent of the female vote. You nailed it. And this is coming from a Democrat!
The superimposing of this and other far-left concerns on country music by Whiskey Riff is unfortunate. Rolling Stone ought to have that territory to itself.
November 18, 2024 @ 4:28 pm
Let’s please not get into gender politics here folks. Not the place. Thanks!
November 18, 2024 @ 5:48 pm
I would occasionally tune in to hear artsy stuff I wouldn’t hear elsewhere. In my 30’s I’ve read Kerouac and Dostoevsky and I own guns. My take is that they got away from being “cool” by giving undo airtime to things that are not going to be seen as cool in the following decades.
November 18, 2024 @ 5:52 pm
Whiskey Riff appears to be doing a more tabloid level inverse of NPR which is focusing on issues that are not culturally significant. There is a reason that Bukowski, Hunter Thompson, The Beat Poets, Miles Davis, whatever are still culturally significant on both sides.
November 18, 2024 @ 4:30 pm
The political content being posted by WR has definitely skyrocketed of late. Here’s the thing – they must have a few talented actual journalists though. I say this because a few months ago they went into a deep dive about the incestuous corruption of the Live Nation/Ticket Master situation. There was real research and facts and insight. My guess is since the article took at least 15 minutes to actually read and comprehend, it bombed with their typical reader who can’t pay attention for more than 2 paragraphs.
November 18, 2024 @ 5:27 pm
As I said in the article, every once in a while Whiskey Riff will come forward with some good reporting, and I don’t take that away from them. I also make sure to give them credit for really pushing independent names like Jesse Daniel, Charles Wesley Godwin, and lots of others. My fear though is they have gone so off the rails here lately especially with their political stuff, even when they do something good, it’s just going to get buried between the clickbait.
November 19, 2024 @ 8:36 am
Minor edit: “…independent country megafestival called Railbird in Kentucky every June, which has been happening since 2020.”
Railbird started in 2019.
November 19, 2024 @ 10:22 am
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. I’ve always been uncomfortable with the obsessive amount of gruesome animal videos Whiskey Riff puts outs. Someone over there ain’t well and is going to do time for a heinous crime someday.
It’s so odd to me Opry Entertainment partnered with them.
I’m one music journalist kind of man and Trig is all I can handle.
November 19, 2024 @ 6:16 pm
Gruesome animal videos?
November 19, 2024 @ 6:53 pm
I haven’t been on their site in a couple years. So I went to check and see if my statement still applies and right under their Jamey Johnson arrest story…
Young Deer Fatally Gores Older Buck As Children Watch In Horror From A Birthday Party
Some more recent ones:
Florida Driver Goes Viral After Turtle Crashes Through Their Windshield
WATCH: Bald Eagle Nest Explodes In Fireball After Being Hit By Lightning Strike In Colorado
Mountain Lion Kills Family Cat & Then Shows Up At Back Door, Covered In Blood, To Taunt Them
Bear Kills Another Bear On Livestream At Katmai National Park, Delaying Annual Fat Bear Week Bracket
Komodo Dragon Swallows Entire Goat Whole… Can Hear It Wailing From Inside
November 20, 2024 @ 12:17 pm
I found it strange how I recently started seeing posts on Facebook showing up again from “We Hate Pop Country” promoting Whiskey Riff’s Click-bait articles when I know that I had them set to Unfollow, somehow that was recently changed to Follow and NOT by me. I deleted them now with no concern.
November 21, 2024 @ 1:14 pm
I loved the Whiskey Riff podcast back in the day, specifically their interviews with smaller independent artists. Those were a lot of fun, and put me onto some artists I was unfamiliar with. Never liked the site itself. You’d listen to a podcast, and then look up their website – almost felt like two different companies.