Big Loud CEO Seth England on How Nashville Is Changing and Earning Morgan Wallen’s Trust

In the last few years, it’s become commonplace to find a country star at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. From “Last Night” by Morgan Wallen to the current chart-topper “Choosin’ Texas” by Ella Langley , all this success in Nashville has caught the coastal pop labels’ attention — now, they’re moving into Music City. In the last year, Capitol Music Group launched Capitol Records Nashville, Interscope Geffen A&M (IGA) Records relaunched the iconic Lost Highway imprint in Nashville, and Atlantic Music Group started their new Nashville outfit Atlantic Outpost — to name a few of the newcomers.

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With all of these new entrants into the country market, it has become increasingly challenging for homegrown labels to hold on to their top stars. But management company, label and publisher Big Loud, helmed by CEO Seth England , is a Nashville-born company thriving in the hot market — and it’s arguable that its artists ushered in this country boom to begin with. After building the careers of talents like Wallen, HARDY , Ernest and Florida Georgia Line , England has proven himself as a hitmaker and is known around town as an executive staying on top of trends — he was an early proponent of streaming — to achieve enviable success.

On this week’s episode of Billboard’s On the Record podcast, England joined to talk through the changing state of the Nashville music business, his successes at Big Loud and why he thinks “country stays strong for the next decade.”

Watch or listen to the full episode of On the Record below on YouTube, or check it out on other podcast platforms here . Read a segment of the conversation below.

Are artists in Nashville today still taking as many pitch songs, or outside songs, as they used to?

I would say, if I was to guess, no, not quite as many, because the environment has also changed. We’re in the short-form, TikTok, Reels, YouTube Shorts era, where more than ever in every genre — but also country music — you’re having kids record a song from their bedroom, put it online, and whatever reaction happens, happens. Most of those… would not be outside songs. They would probably be something they’d written themselves… I would say, just because of that climate, that’s one of many reasons you’re seeing that shift. But yes, they’re still very much happening. Morgan is making his next album right now. I don’t know exactly what the ratio would be, but I would say he writes six or seven out of every ten songs. So that still leaves room to go find something he wouldn’t write himself — go find something different that would round out the album or give a new direction.

Morgan Wallen once told Billboard that you have one of the best ears in the game. He said you convinced him to record “Thinkin’ Bout Me” and that song ended up going number one on the Country Airplay chart. How do you gain the trust of an artist to be able to bring them outside songs and convince them that it’s worth it? What I see in pop music these days is a lot of artists don’t really have much trust in their A&Rs .

In a lot of cases, rightfully so — having the wrong influences around can make you only second-guess your confidence. I would say the artist has to want that collaboration and that teamwork, if you will, while still making the final call. But man, he’s so good. Even to this day, I’ll hear [other people in the music business say] — ‘Oh the artist doesn’t listen in the studio anymore, they’re not willing to collaborate’ — [Morgan] hasn’t had any of those moments. Not even close.

More so, he’ll ask: ‘Have we lost it? Are we still sharp?’ You know, talking about [striving to be] great instead of good. I know that sounds cheesy, but there is a difference, and he knows there’s a difference. I think one of the reasons he worked with us in the first place was probably because that was our mentality.

Morgan is known for releasing long albums, often over 30 tracks. What goes into making that creative choice?

The truest answer is, after that first album did really great for him, he started hearing so many [pitch] songs that just felt like, ‘wow, these are great.’ In our collective team’s opinion, the stuff he was writing was [also becoming] extremely inspired. He was really starting to come into his own. So what happened was even though he had about 18 demos that we knew we’d record for the album — there were [also] another 30 or 40 that were decent but did not hit the bar of what we were going for — but we were so far from being done. He had all these sessions [with other songwriters] still on the books…

Do we get it exactly right, like a science? No, probably not. There’s stuff that slips through, and music is subjective at the end of the day. But that’s how we attack it. We feel like, in the end, we look back and go: ‘Wow, he just made something really worth clicking through the whole way.’

A fast growing trend in the music industry is companies that do it all — management, label and publishing. While in some ways these can be great arrangements for everyone involved, they can also be a little dangerous. There can be double dipping, or a lack of accountability — because your manager is also all these other things. Did you ever have any fears of having those multiple roles Big Loud played contradicting each other?

Yes, but not necessarily in the way you asked the question… I hear [people say] ‘Oh, you can’t have these people do both roles,’ ‘Why?’ ‘Well, you double dip.’ Let’s be clear: we don’t double dip. I don’t take money from them twice. I’m their partner. Matter of fact, it was always my goal, if I was in multiple roles with someone, that when you look at the waterfall, they made — just bluntly speaking — more money with me than they would have if they’d had someone in each individual role. Not to incentivize the structure, but to be clear: that’s not why we’re doing this.

I only started managing Morgan [Wallen] when he had fallen out with some managers that weren’t the right fit, and we were already deep into the relationship as label and publisher, and his natural inclination was to say, ‘Can you help me out? I’m in a less-than-ideal situation.’

And a lot of people may not realize: folks like ourselves would sometimes work for someone for less than the market rate for a role, just because we’re his partner. So there are two sides to that. When you’re really someone’s partner, there’s things you’ll do that you wouldn’t do if you were just one piece of their wheel. And so I would like to think that most of my acts look back and see more benefits to that than negatives. That being said, I was never against saying, ‘Let’s co-manage — get someone to help us.’

How important do you think country radio is these days for breaking songs and artists?

I definitely think country radio has moved a bit more with the times, meaning: let’s be a megaphone for the records that are breaking. I’m also starting to see shifts happen even on on-demand streaming. Although there are huge [streaming] playlists… now [it’s not moving the needle as much.]

We have this rock band going right now — Dexter and the Moonrocks — and I have to fact check this… [but] they got some massive [Spotify] playlists like Marrow and other big ones. That was a goal [for us] but still, the editorial are only 5% of their streams. The rest is active audience.

Playlists don’t break someone like they used to. Not to say it’s not cool and great —

I think in theory it still can, but it’s happening so far fewer times, and it would only work for the songs that are genuinely going to convert [real fans]. A playlist play does not mean you’re going to convert. As a matter of fact, it might only fast-track the result to show you that you don’t convert. That’s what’s different. Previously, the gatekeepers — who we still talk to every day and collaborate with — were the ones who chose what was popular in our genre, in every genre, until now. You now also have this radio-like nature happening with streaming.

Pop music is interesting to me because every few years it starts taking inspiration from another genre. 2016 was rap, for example, and right now, it feels like country is the one. But pop fans are fickle and they always move on. How do you expect Nashville to change after pop inevitably moves on?

Music is cyclical. ‘Pop’ is just popular music. Pop radio is primarily built of a handful of mainstay pop stars. That’s their genre. But then they also pull crossover records from rock, rhythmic radio, country radio, Hot AC, AAA — it can come from any other subculture. I think that will never change. To your point, at times where hip-hop seemed to be so crossover-dominant, or when country was in its heyday, but it could change — you might get fewer country songs at the top ahead. But I always think you’ll have the top two or three songs from our genre.

Like “Choosin’ Texas” doesn’t sound like pop radio, but by gosh it’s popular. It actually kind of hits like a pop record underneath the surface in terms of the hit factor. It’s a great song. So I think that’s going to happen in the future.

One thing I’ll mention is I read an article about listening habits — something we don’t focus on enough: our fans’ listening habits. We sometimes think our job is to convert casual fans into passionate ones. That’s less possible. Rather than finding a casual listener and trying to convert them, it’s actually more about finding a super fan of another genre and just introducing them to country music. Changing someone’s listening habits is so hard.

There’s no exact percentage, but roughly 10% of music fans are the actual ones who care, who go find it, who seek it out. The other 90% predominantly let music come to them. What’s notable about country music compared to other genres is it has the highest percentage of people who go seek it out — they want to invest in the artist, they lean forward… So country music, hopefully, has some version of staying power in that, by nature, the fan really, really cares about the subject and the human. Whereas in another genre, sometimes it just stops at the song.

I’ve always noticed the loyalty of country fans. How many country stars do you see that, 20 years down the line, are still making hit records? You really don’t see that in pop.

I don’t think country’s done. I mean, there will certainly be cyclical years where things change. Nothing’s going to be on top forever.

But I think there’s a certain someone out there in our genre whose music is not on all platforms, and I believe there’s actually a massive, supercharged moment waiting — if and when he decides to do that — that’s going to change our genre again for three or four years, because of the impact of his music [on streaming platforms]…. And therefore, any artists who are also inspired by him, because of the way algorithms work, will really benefit too [and get new fans guided to them]. I really hope to see Garth [Brooks] come back online and re-permeate his music everywhere, because I think the genre will take a massive lift. Moments like that? It’s a face card yet to play. Genre-wise, I think country stays strong for the next decade.

_Originally reported by [Billboard](https://www.billboard.com/pro/billboard-on-the-record-big-loud-ceo-talks-nashville/)._