At times, the country music industry’s disinterest in expanding its listeners racially in the past has confounded me. Wouldn’t u expect a business try to sell its products to anyone willing 2 buy? It’s more complicated. A thread on race, capitalism, & the country music business:

To varying degrees, country music's been a victim of a form of racial discrimination since it was invented as a marketing category in the 1920s. Because it was first defined as music 4 rural white Southerners, it was branded w/ an inferior whiteness, vulnerable to prejudice.

By the 1940s-50s, country was still routinely ridiculed as hillbilly music. This led to legitimization efforts to convince the public of country’s respectability. Most crucially, this resulted in the formation of the Country Music Association in 1958.

But up to the present, the CMA’s still had to fight to show advertisers that the country audience isn’t a bunch of poor hillbillies. Rather, since the 60-70s especially, the audience’s been mostly white, mid-income, & urban/suburban–the primary beneficiaries of post-WW2 affluence

This has meant that the industry has had to double down on proving its investment in country music's "respectable" whiteness, resulting in many marketing campaigns going out of their way to define listeners along these lines:

As a result, the industry has routinely ignored evidence of listeners who don't fit the demographics desirable to advertisers & respectability, & instead further committed itself to exclusively catering to a lucrative white audience that's most desirable to radio & tv advertisers

This system is also gendered. Bc advertisers most desire audiences along the likes of lucrative suburban white wives & mothers, country radio has catered 2 this demand, routinely convincing itself that these women only want to listen to and fantasize about attractive male singers

I don't mean 2 oversimplify the industry's investment in whiteness all down 2 advertisers. The malleability of country's whiteness, whether it's the hillbilly type, or the "respectable" middle-class version the CMA seeks to sell it as, has proven valuable 2 the industry over time

For instance, since the 1970s or so, appropriations of the redneck figure by urban, middle-income ppl has proven popular at times, helping 2 boost country music sales. The industry's embrace of these moments (HeeHaw etc) has proven harmful to rural whites, victims of stereotyping

My point in all of this is that we live in a world defined by racial capitalism, where $ drives business instincts that invariably reinstate racial, gender, & class inequalities. The cm industry & its discriminatory marketing are a symptom of this, but of course are no excuse.

Another thing I’d add to this: I’m not sure how marginalized country music is in the eyes of advertisers TODAY, but it’s bc of its historic marginalization that the industry became set in its ways about defining country listeners as nothing but white middle income ppl.