Sorry Spotify, country music is still a radio industry

Over on the Billboard Country Charts, a song called “In Case You Didn’t Know” by Brett Young is sitting at the No. 2 spot. Young is relatively new to the country music scene, and just last year, he went out on a radio tour across the U.S., as many new country artists do. The radio tour is a right of passage for new singers in the industry. After an artist signs a deal with a label, they travel around America, visiting upwards of a hundred radio stations. The singers meet with radio program directors, trying to convince them to add their songs to the rotation. The tour is exhausting, but the artists do it because even in this age of online music streaming, traditional radio is the way to become a star in the country music world. Emily Yahr wrote about the country music radio tour for the Washington Post, and Marketplace’s Adriene Hill spoke to her about what keeps the tradition going.