The results are in: for the first quarter of 2024, Warner Chappell earned the top spot on the Country Airplay publisher rankings for the second quarter in a row.
With a 33.08% market share, WCM, helmed in Nashville by president/CEO Ben Vaughn, is the top publisher. This is thanks to the shares the publisher had in eight of the top 10 songs of the quarter. Overall, it also had stakes in 68 of the quarter’s top 100 Country Airplay songs, including Country Airplay No. 1 Nate Smith’s “World On Fire,” HARDY’s No. 2 “Truck Bed,” and Warren Zeider’s No. 3 track “Pretty Little Poison.”
Apart from Sony Music Publishing’s five-consecutive-quarter reign at No. 1 from Q3 of 2022 to Q3 of 2023, Warner Chappell has consistently held the quarterly top country music publisher title in Nashville, dating back to about 2017.
This quarter Sony Music Publishing held in second place with a 20.04% market share on the Country Airplay chart. SMP has shares in 51 of the chart’s songs including the top two tunes this quarter, which are both thanks to its tie to one of Nashville’s biggest hitmakers Ashley Gorley, who sold his catalog and signed a go-forward deal with SMP (in partnership with Domain Capital Group) in May 2022. For the first quarter, Gorley ranked as the top country songwriter, with a co-writer stake in 16 of the period’s Top 100 Country Airplay songs.
The rest of the market share for other companies on the Country Airplay chart lags far behind Nashville’s top two publishers. BMG comes in third, for example, with 8.18% market share, which is slightly more than two percentage points up from where they were last year in Q1 with 6.09% Country Airplay marketshare. It is the first time BMG has ranked above major publisher, Universal Music Publishing Group, since Q1 of 2018. Top songs for the publisher this quarter include Cody Johnson’s “The Painter,” the No. 4 song on the Country Airplay chart, and Chayce Beckham’s “23,” the No. 8 tune.
Universal Music Publishing Group holds the fourth spot this quarter with 6.85% market share on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart. Just three quarters ago, UMPG had an especially good quarter with a 12.71% ranking — about double what it reached this time. Top songs for UMPG include Thomas Rhett’s “Mawmaw’s House,” the No. 5 song and Scotty McCreery’s “Cab in a Solo,” the No. 15 tune.
Looking at the rankings from No. 5 to No. 8, Kobalt ranks fifth in market share for the Country Airplay chart at 5.78%; Big Machine Music slightly surpasses Concord at 4.11% to 4.10% market shares, respectively; Spirit Music ranks eighth with 2.02%.
The ninth largest publisher on the Country Airplay chart belongs to Purple Rabbit Music, the publishing company that represents songwriter Tracy Chapman. The spot represents the continued impact her song “Fast Car,” which was covered by Luke Combs last year and performed by the two artists together at the Grammy awards earlier this year. Its placement in the rankings represents its debut for the Top 10 Country Airplay publishers.
Lastly, Anthem brings up the end of the Top 10 Country Airplay publishers with a 1.87% marketshare, a tick below Purple Rabbit’s 1.88% share for the quarter.