The Willie Nelson and Garth phenomenoms are pretty good examples Song Dude. (Never know what your name is, but you are pretty smart for a Denmarkian) actually what both of those and others did were bring different people into the genre that didn't like country music before.

Willie, Waylon, Merle, Johnny Paycheck, etc. brought in the "Owtlaw Movement" which basically brought the "pot smoking hippies"in. That widened the format and opened up the concepts. Of course Willie then became a Hollywood actor and got all respectable. LOL!

The Garth phenomenom brought in the "Kiss" fans of the big rock show into country. He shifted the peramerters and dynamics of the game by getting the rockers involved and the big stage shows we see now.

In both case it radically opened the money floodgates and the LA and New York inflences in. Which of course got rid of the multi year careers and led to the flavor of the week singers and acts.

If you follow the trends in country music,you can see a correlation between the money coming in, and other elements of society. For instance, if you look in 1995,the same time Country was exploding, things in LA were insane. Rodney King riots, mudslides, earth quakes, famine, pestilince, locusts, etc. They came to Nashville, invested in real estate and basically took over the industry here.

The latest trend is reality TV shows, and the youth phenomenon of Taylor Swift, who was the biggest selling act in all of music. That continues marketing music to a younger demographic which of course are less likely to purchase music legally. So that is essentially where we are.

MAB