What Country Star Has the Most Passionate Fanbase? (A Data Deep Dive) 

Head to keeps.com/gradysmith to get 50% off your first order of hair loss treatment.

This is super dope - thank you for including me … blessed to be on this list in any form - ps the music is worth checking out Grady 🙏

As a complete data nerd, these videos are my very favorite of Grady’s. Keep them up, thanks!!

Every time Charles Wesley Godwin gets brought up it makes my day.

Charles Westley Godwin came up on my Spotify a couple months ago and Seneca Creek still came out as my #3 song. It listens like a novel.

Not surprised at all the CWG did so well with streams/listener. Dude deserves a lot more popularity, such a great talent

Stoked to see Bailey Zimmerman support Morgan on his tour this summer… dude is gonna be one of the next faces of country music

I think anyone would be hard pressed to find another artist that has fans with the same passion of Taylor Swift fans. Her fans are the reason she’s been able to have success with re-recording her past albums, which says a lot considering there had been very few, if any, to do so before her. If you strictly look at the success of All Too Well, for instance, it was just an album deep cut back in 2012. In fact, it was still incredibly painful for her to perform at the time. Her fans flipped the meaning. They loved it so much, and then they begged for the 10 minute version for an entire decade. When she released it, alongside her short film, it became the longest #1 song on BB100 ever, is nominated for a Grammy, and she’s had a ridiculous amount of success with the film, including campaigning for the Oscars right now. In regards to new releases, Midnights broke an absurd number of records. The album had 186 million streams on its first day, the most in Spotify history, BUT she had 228 million streams overall that day, meaning people also played her back catalog and didn’t just listen to her new release. My favorite record was holding all 10 spots of the BB100 top 10. The craziest way to put that into perspective is that every single one of those songs would have gone #1 if it wasn’t for another one of its own blocking it. Of course, you already covered the bottom line, I just wanted to throw in some extra data regarding Taylor’s fans:)) This was such a great video! It was so fun to see several artists’ data compiled/compared!

My Spotify Wrapped top 5 artists were: 1. Tyler Childers 2. Zach Bryan 3. Colter Wall 4. Cole Chaney 5. Billy Strings My top 5 songs were: 1. Country Squire- Tyler Childers 2. Another Day in the Life- Cole Chaney 3. If She wants a Cowboy- Zach Bryan 4. Shoot Low Sheriff- The Tyler Childers cover 5. River Fool- Ian Noe Get this man to 200 000k subs already people!

Grady I love when you do data videos. I find them so interesting

Love seeing Alan Jackson make some of these lists. Would be interesting to see how some of this data compares to radio airplay and tour numbers at the end of the year.

I love these deep dive videos, they always bring such interesting insight!

Ok so as a grad student and geneticist who spends his days analyzing big data and listening to country music I loved that you did this! It excites me on so many levels! I have so many thoughts and questions about this data. I can’t wait to go and explore your dataset and test different different correlations. Honestly you could use this data to develop a model to predict Spotify listening metrics and the major labels would absolutely eat it up if it’s accurate. I’d love to continue looking at this and letting you know what I find!

awesome work, grady! excited to see your year end stuff!

Blows my mind that someone like Jon Pardi who's my favourite modern Country singer is technically not considered super "popular" when he mixes old and modern Country sounds like no one else! My other favourites include Aaron Watson and Orville Peck who are again no where near these lists. It's clear as day that these charts don't include the realest Country singers unfortunately. Which is a shame since back in the days, legends like Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Hank Williams, got the recognition they deserved. But I guess times have changed quite a bit...Just my 2 cents!

Grady ! You do it everytime !!!! Love it.

Happy to see Bailey in the top 10. Don't think I've heard a song and gone "this guy is goin to be a superstar" as quickly as I did with him.

The videos you put are awesome. I always look forward to them

Love videos like this

Seeing CWG at 19 on the spreadsheet makes me so happy. I know touring with Zach Bryan definitely helped, but he deserves it so much Edit: I posted this before I got to the point in the video where you mentioned him. But it shows the people that liked and/or knew about him listened. And I know Jamie was a big point of that being attached to ZB, but damn I'm so happy about that.

Great video! I love getting nerdy about music and data.

Super interesting and informative, thank you!

Grady I’ve been watchin you for a while and you got me to fall in love with country music I highly recommend giving Joel Adam Russell a listen especially take me somewhere, borrowed time, and rosemary may

one of my favorite videos you've done man.

Great video! Love every video you make and can't wait for the year-end videos :D

Love the spreadsheet!

Another great video bro. You've been killing it lately! Excited to see what your top albums are for the year! Won't be surprised to see Raised in that list 👀

This is what I come for with Grady. Love these deep dives.

My top 2 most listened to country artists were The Judds, and Mike & The Moonpies.

awesome video, Grady! Love the breakdown backed up by data. I wonder how the passion metric would compare if you looked at it on a genre by genre basis. My gut tells me that country fans are more loyal and have more steams per listener, whereas pop and others have more one-off-ers. Could be interesting to look at. Keep up the awesome work!

Great video

Stats videos are awesome! Is there a cutoff for artists to post their Spotify stats? This list is neat for analyzing listener data. Makes me wonder how duets and such contribute to data.

I’ve rocked with Jelly for a decade, no slowing down. Zach Bryan stays at the intro to all my country playlists.

This was an amazing video Grady. I love the idea. I know you can’t always Spotify stats, but if you did more Ethos based Country music videos… 🔥

I loved this video as a nerd of stats. Thank yo so much!

As I was watching this and looking the data I found it extremely surprising that rodney atkins name up so many times. He had one gigantic album 15 years ago and some spotty hits that span the next 9 years but he has kind of died out. Super impressive.

I finally used Spotify this year only for the 4 months I had a free promo for no ads. that was when American Heartbreak came out and I listened to those 30+ songs with Something in the Orange and She Wants a Cowboy on repeat...so that really made my 4 mos wrap not as accurate lol. I certainly listened to Zac Bryan but not as often as Flatland Calvary, Kaitlin Butts and Turnpike Troubadours

Love the use of data to analyze country! Not enough journalists/reviewers do it.

Love the vid, Grady! But you’re definitely right! It would have been interesting to see Morgan vs Luke - both of which are at the top of their game.

These videos are my favorite tbh

Great video! Definitely expected Morgan and Zach at 1-2 but wow, some surprises for sure!

Cool video ! Zac Brown Band didn't post their Spotify Wrapped, I think they'd be on this list as well

My top 5 and songs were all country! Eric Church, Dierks Bentley, and George Strait. Every year since I've had Spotify

We need a 2023 version of this Grady.

“Release Date Agnostic,” the next merch shirt from Grady Smith?? Some fun design ideas there

Grady's video quality has been through the roof recently

Cody Johnson actually took over my music the last year. Top 4 of my most listened songs were by him, Guilty as Can Be was #1 with my only none Cojo song being Fire Line by Billy Strings.

Love to see Kidd G up on here with the passionate listeners

Oh how I want you/us to have all the data from all artists to compare these metrics!! Sooooo interesting

I have listened to every song Zach Bryan song released this year, and have listened to American Heartbreak all the way through over 20 times, so seeing Zach so high was great.

Morgan getting “soft cancelled” by country radio is probably the best thing that has happened to his career.

I listened to Letting Someone Go 153 times this year on Spotify. Zach is the king of my Playlists!

Maddie & Tae appeal to young couples like my wife and myself...and our baby daughter. I agree with your criticism in a previous video about their music being too low-key and lacking vigor, especially the two-volume latest albums. But, we can identify with them because they are in the same stage of life as us (married couples starting families), and I think that gets overlooked as an important factor in an artist's success. So, those streaming numbers are us and many others like us! Not surprisingly, Zach Bryan is someone I like and appreciate but don't stream very often, for pretty much the same reason that I stream Maddie & Tae more. If it were my 23 year old self, it would be the reverse.

Elite vid

My top artists are 1. Koe Wetzel 2. Whiskey Myers 3. Riley Green 4. Cody Johnson 5. Jon Pardi My most played song was The Ballad Of Curtis Loew By: Lynyrd Skynyrd

Just 0:10 in I'm like yessssss I've been patiently waiting for this video!

I think it’s great that muscadine bloodline is having the large success they have while being independent. It makes me feel good to know that they’re just doing their thing and they’re still able to succeed the way they are.

I really love Bailey Zimmerman I was wondering could you do a review on his album please

I’m glad to see Kameron Marlowe way high up !! He wasn’t talked about in the video but he is one of my favorite artists. Been listening to him for so long!!

My Spotify Wrapped Artists 1. Midland 2. Tyler Childers 3. Led Zeppelin 4. Johnny Cash 5. Cody Jinks Songs 1. Adios Cowboy- Midland 2. Feathered Indians- Tyler Childers 3. Set ‘Em Up Joe- Jamey Johnson 4. Everything She Ain’t - Hailey Whitters 5. Hippies and Cowboys - Cody Jinks I kept adding songs throughout the year to a single playlist, so ones that were put in earlier in the year naturally have more plays. Also, Cash and Zeppelin received lots of plays, but no single song of theirs had enough to crack the top 5 since so many were added. Talk about deep catalogs

I think Grady is becoming the Marques Brownlee of country music/music. I’m here to support it.

I love Ian Munsick and I guess I'm not alone. I listen to his album at least every other month.

So this probably has something to do with playlists. For example, I listen to country a looooot. But I work out several days a week, which my playlist contains zero country songs. Therefore, my ratio for favorite artists/songs is skewed because I’m jamming out to hip hop for the majority of my gym time (which is a far cry from my favorite genre). Just a thought. Also really glad to see Alan Jackson still kicking ass.

About resurfacing songs- so true! When OneRepublic dropped their single Run, Ryan Tedder said that streaming services kill new music - he noticed this because Counting Stars was being picked up by new listeners and was topping his new single in streams.

I like your portraits of Eminem and John C Reilly on the wall behind you lol

Hell yeah! Us Morgan Wallen fans definitely go hard for him. A good chunk of his streams sure came from me.

Great Video Grady! My top artists were 🫵 1. Tyler Childers 2. Zach Bryan 3. Kanye West 4. Charley Crocket 5. Marty Robbins Possibly interesting

Upchurch put his up and his math works out to 55.05 streams per listener which I thought was interesting

I love nerdy stats stuff so this was cool to see.

I can testify for Ian Munsick. I discovered his music in 2020 and he has 3 of my top 10 lifetime streams. Can't stop listening even though he catalog is small. I streamed the singles more before the album released than after even.

My top 5 artists were Jon Pardi (by a landslide at #1), Morgan Wallen, George Strait, Alan Jackson, and Randy Travis

Would’ve liked to see Parker McCollum data I’ve probably listened to all his albums and EPs 10+ times each this year

You must atone!!! "Whoa, funky immediately"

Artist with high monthly listeners are usually those who get the best playlisting which naturally goes up with new releases and if they have a single that’s currently being pushed.

Grady wants to be a data scientist at heart

It'd be interesting to see what Hardys was. I regularly fall asleep to his stuff or have it playing while working in the yard

Zach Bryan. Especially us that have been listening to him on RU-vid since 2018. I have 13k minutes of ZB Edit. That’s about 166 hours

with the amount of music that me and my friends listen to I think its crazy that apple music numbers aren't talked about!

I saw Upchurch’s thing and he had 277 million streams with only 5million listeners he would have came in second place with 55.7 streams per listener

Ok stats, probability and data collection is so cool.

Happy to see COJO and Zach Bryan so high here, love them both!

Jelly Roll has one of the best LIVE shows of any country/crossover artist I've ever seen. I saw shows from him, Jason Aldean, and Thomas Rhett this year, and Jelly Roll had the most energetic, rockin' show. Highly recommend seeing him LIVE.

Charles Wesley Godwin is amazing. I found him because of your channel. He was my top artist this year.

Mine would be with Alan Jackson and Alabama. I'm not sure exactly how many I have for each, but it has to be high.

You should check out Mike Cross, Bruce Anfinson, and Barry Ward, David Childers!

I wonder if the longer albums helped Wallen and Bryan? I don't know how many people listen to albums specifically on streaming platforms, but when one album gets you 30 streams, that's going to pad your statistics compared to dropping a load of EPs.

I’m not a huge Bailey Zimmerman fan, but I do think it’s pretty interesting that you highlighted him as a solid bet for a breakout this your and he’s become like the biggest breakout artist of this year just in the past week or two

Grady actually has the most passionate fan base

oooo this one is going viral

My RU-vid Music recap showed me that Alan Jackson was my second most listen artist. I don't know how they came to this result. I only downloaded one of his song and I did not listen to is very often. I listen much more to other artist.

Had the the chance to see Charles Wesley Godwin in Newport during covid. There was legit 8 people in the audience that night. I was Charles go up to the bar and nobody was going up to him. Went up to him shook his hand cheered beers with him and just talked for a bit. The man is so humble and kind and was just happy to be there. Love him to death. Have seen him 5 times now. #6 in February.

Top 0.005% of Brad Paisley listeners😎😎😎

Upchurch has a 55 streams per Listener🔥

Love Morgan and Bailey!

Ian Munsick is my favorite

I was top 1% of Zach Bryan listeners...number 2 was Upchurch...I'd be interested in seeing his stats. - says a lot I guess - My 2 moods: sentimental/nostalgic & angry/violent

I am in the top 1% of Flatland Cavalry listeners! Cody and Munsick we're in my top 5 as well. Munsick is just so easy to listen to.

I wonder where hardy would’ve landed on the list as he is my top artist, but some of his streams came in under hixtape

Not surprised by Jelly Roll since he was an independent artist up until not that long ago. Successful independent artists typically have smaller but very dedicated fanbases. I bet Upchurch would have been high on this list as well

So glad to see other Ian Munsick fans are like me! Congrats to him!! 🥳 @GradySmith, you should check out the singer Angie K! She is super talented and has a unique story having been born and raised in El Salvador and then moving to the US. Her music incorporates Spanish in an awesome way. Check out "Laredo"!