How Country Artist Managers Max Out the Experience at CMA Fest

Hundreds of country artists, from superstars to new aspirants, will spend June 5-8 saying thanks to their fan base and working to build new audiences when an expected 90,000 daily visitors attend CMA Fest in Nashville.

But for most of those artists, there’ll be one or more people at their side who are likewise invested in making the most of the annual event. Managers benefit when their artists expand their fan bases and increase consumption, driving up ticket prices and boosting merchandise sales.

Thus, those managers are focused on maxing out the connection their acts make with consumers during CMA Fest, but they have other interests during the festival, too: evaluating the market, networking with industry contacts and checking out other artists they might want to sign.

“I can go around town and see 20 things in a day instead of having to take 20 days to see 20 things,” says Play It Again Music GM Cade Price, who manages Dylan Marlowe, Faith Hopkins and Slater Nalley. “It’s not like we’re trying to go sign anything and everything, but it’s CMA Fest. I think we do ourselves a disfavor if we don’t go out there and see. You just never know who you’re going to stumble onto.”

Fans have a good idea of the artists they may see. Nightly concerts at Nissan Stadium are one of the primary attractions for CMA Fest, an annual event since 1972 that has generated a summer network TV special for more than 20 years. Keith Urban, Cody Johnson, Rascal Flatts, Jason Aldean, Scotty McCreery, Luke Bryan and Blake Shelton are among the nearly 30 artists slated for the stadium main stage this year.

But while the football field garners the most attention, some of the most important work of CMA Fest occurs during the day at nine smaller festival stages, plus a bundle of unofficial adjunct performance spots. Those platforms help new and developing artists, in particular, showcase their talents to consumers in their target audience who may not otherwise be fully aware of them. This year’s participants on those building stages include Bryce Leatherwood, Charlie Worsham, Cooper Alan, Crowe Boys, Hudson Westbrook, Madeline Edwards and Tyler Braden.

It’s a massive opportunity for fans to experience artists they don’t know well and, in turn, a prime chance for artist managers to get a big-picture assessment of country’s most avid fans.

“It’s always kind of fun to observe the people that come in and get a good idea of what the country fan base looks like at that point in time,” says Champ Management founder Matt Musacchio, who counts Vincent Mason, Jessie James Decker, Dawson Anderson, Abbie Callahan and Sons of Habit as clients. “You see how the fan base differs from artist to artist and stage to stage, depending on who’s playing.”

Unlike their artists, most managers are able to blend in with the crowd, and it provides them a great opportunity to move across the Downtown Nashville footprint. Much of their day is spent shepherding their acts through their schedules, and they’re bound to encounter other executives and musicians they already know backstage. But most have some breakaway moments when they can check out other performances and new amenities, where they’re likely to run across industry contacts.

“For me personally, it was massive,” says Los Angeles-based Type A Management founder Alex Lunt, who attended his first CMA Fest in 2024 with Dasha. “It was an amazing opportunity to really just tap in with the entire country community because you have everybody. You even have all the coastal label execs there. They’re all going to come to CMA Fest.”

The scouting gives a better sense of the opportunities, too. That’s particularly valuable as their artists return year after year and their goals change. Lunt’s first experience a year ago, when Dasha’s single “Austin” was breaking out, was an overload.

“Last year, we were just kind of like a fire hose to the mouth and saying yes to everything,” he notes. 

Dasha played two songs on the spotlight stage at the stadium, the first time she had performed for an audience of 50,000. But she also packed some of the smaller adjunct events in Nashville bars. For this year, they focused more on branding, creating a line-dance experience at the Whiskey Bent Saloon.

“She’ll have her Coyote Ugly moment, perform on the bar and do a couple numbers,” Lunt notes. “We just wanted to give her her statement, and we’re calling it ‘Dashville’ because her whole tour is basically called ‘Welcome to Dashville.’”

For managers with years of CMA Fest history, every iteration brings new perspective on the format and their clients.

“It’s fun to see the artist’s career grow incrementally with what they’re doing at CMA Fest every year,” Musacchio says. “It’s always, I think, a good gauge of how the last year has been and where things are going, and kind of where the artist sits in the grand scheme of things.”

It’s also a great motivator for manager and artist. The large turnout from the country audience invariably reminds participants how many consumers are willing to invest in the genre. But it also offers a physical reminder of how many artists are competing for those listeners. Hopefully, both the manager and the artist find motivation in that part of the experience.

“It makes you think about how much new music is being released each week,” Price says. “That’s allowing us to see that and gets our minds going: ‘What do we need to be doing to stand out in the crowd?’”