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andy Goodman’s tenure as Sony Music Nashville chief has been marked by breakouts. The major-ity of the label’s biggest successes has been with acts signed on his watch, younger artists who have achieved major streams, sales and crossover fame. These include Luke Combs, Kane Brown and Maren Morris, who have con-sistently been among the top-streaming acts in country and all of who have gained a foothold with young audiences, beyond Nashville’s typical purview.

Combs shattered all manner of streaming records. Morris sauntered onto the pop charts. Brown won crossover audiences with multi-genre collabs and by confronting America’s racial and cultural divides with warmth and humanity. Goodman’s belief in the authenticity of these acts was pivotal to their growth.

Goodman recognizes that the key to success is knowing when to say, “I don’t know” and relying on the people who do: the fans. “We realize our younger fans are really into everything,” he says. “Luke’s people are streaming a lot of Drake. We see a lot of Ariana Grande and Billie Eilish on Maren’s fans’ playlists. Our artists are getting better range, reaching more and different people.”

SMN’s boss has also enjoyed major success with hitmaking tro-phy magnets Old Dominion and superstars like multitasking enter-tainer Brad Paisley and country diva supreme Miranda Lambert, whose work in recent years has shown consistent evolution and creative risk—and garnered a fair number of streams as well.

By the end of 2019, SMN had 75% of the year’s #1 albums in country consumption, and the company continued to earn strong country marketshare. Its roster took home enough CMA, ACM, CMT and other hardware to fill a warehouse. Most impor-tantly, it had a roster of acts with

staying power and reach.When Goodman took the

helm in 2015, it was a homecom-ing. The bespectacled industry leader started his label career in the publicity department at RCA Records in 1981—and moved through essentially every depart-ment at the iconic label.

“Joe [Galante] never let me stay in a job very long,” Goodman tells HITS. “Publicity, artist development and dealing with TV, product management, sales with Dave Wheeler—Joe kept moving me as soon as I got good at something.”

Born in Albuquerque, where his father was stationed after the Korean War, and moving six months later to Nashville, he developed

the flexibility demonstrated under Galante moving to New Holland, Penn., for his father’s work, back to Nashville at 12, then off to Bowling Green, Ky., for two years of high school. Though he took classes at David Lipscomb University before his senior year, he never bothered going back to high school. But he did go back to Bowling Green, to play drums in a couple of local bands, including Southern Star with band members Bill Lloyd and Kim Richey.

It was college classes in Nash-ville during the week, local band guy on the weekend. Along the way, Goodman struck up a friend-ship with Owsley Manier, one of

R R A N D Y G O O D M A N ’ S

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“ R A N D Y I S T H E

R I G H T G U Y

T O C O N V I N C E

C O M PA N I E S

T H AT N A S H V I L L E

I S T H E P L A C E

T O B E I F T H E Y

W A N T T O D O

B U S I N E S S I N

T H E M U S I C

I N D U S T R Y. ”

— F O R M E R

N A S H V I L L E

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Goodman with Luke Combs

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the Exit/In’s founders. Helping with local bookings, he began a working relation-ship with Dave Perkins of The Flying Burrito Brothers’ last incarnation. He later booked, promoted, tour-managed and played drums when needed with The Dave Perkins Band.

He remembers getting stiffed open-ing for Kinky Freedman at the original Lone Star Café, shows at Kenny’s Castaways, college dates. It was all fun and games until he got a call from Don Cusic at Cashbox. “I was in New York trying to find a job, and he told me Top Billing needed a publicist. I said, ‘I don’t know how.’ And he said, ‘Yes, you do. You’re doing it right now.’”

Top Billing, Tandy Rice’s agency, was booking Tom T. Hall, Jim Ed Brown & Helen Cornelius, Don Gibson, Bobby Bare, The Bellamy Brothers and comic Jerry Clower. Goodman took his last few dollars, flew back to Nashville and got the job. Surviving Top Billings’ rite of passage—a trip to Clower’s home-town of Yazoo, Miss.—he thrived.

Goodman graduated from Lipscomb with a B.A. in Political Science and Economics. He also audited every course offered in Belmont College’s developing Music Business curriculum.

He began his RCA Nashville tenure in PR; after stints in marketing and merch he was named VP/Product Development in 1988 and later, VP of Promotion & Product Development. He’d become Nipper Nashville’s secret weapon.

When Galante was sent to New York to run all of RCA, he took his utility player with him, tapping Goodman as VP of Product Development.

“Joe goes to New York, and I think, ‘Oh, wow! The ultimate position; I’ll now get to run this [Nashville] division!’” Goodman relates. “But he calls and says, ‘I need you here.’ Out of 80 names, I only recognized Bruce Hornsby’s... But I got to be there for KRS-One and Kool Moe Dee, this nascent hip-hop thing. I got to work the Wu-Tang Clan and Dave Matthews.” His stretch there also gave him an opportunity to meet biz players

With Miranda Lambert

Joe Galante, Goodman, Roy Rogers and Jack Weston (left); with Dolly Parton (center); Alabama’s Randy Owen and Jeff Cook, Goodman and Alabama’s Teddy Gentry and Mark Herndon (right)

like Barry Weiss, Coran Capshaw and Terry Hemmings (now head of Provident Entertainment under the SMN banner).

“It was a time for RCA New York where ‘anything you’re going to eat, you’re going to have to go out and kill,’” he adds.

By 1991, Goodman had been named SVP of Marketing and become active in several charitable organizations, in 1994 serving on the execu-

tive council of the Sixth Annual T. J. Martell Industry Roast. Still, he—and Galante—missed Nashville.

Galante became head of BMG operations, overseeing RCA, BNA and Christian label Reunion, which were reconstituted as RCA Records Label Group/Nashville. Goodman was named SVP/GM.

Not long after his return to Nashville, uber-barrister Joel Katz reached out, saying that Walt Disney Records wanted to start a country label and needed a leader. Goodman felt it wasn’t necessarily a good time for a country start-up, and he certainly wouldn’t pursue such a thing without Galante’s okay. But Galante signed off and, as Goodman told Radio & Records in 2007, “It finally dawned on me: How many times do you have an opportunity to start a company, and for a company like Walt Disney?”

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Goodman launched Lyric Street as a division of Hollywood Records, initially set up in the Bama House on the corner of Chet Atkins Place and 19th Ave. South, where he “hung with Alabama back in the day.” He recruit-ed Doug Howard, whom he’d met at Belmont, to spearhead his A&R team.

With songwriter Lari White and traditionalist Aaron Tippin on board and the understanding that it would take five years to see a profit, Goodman and his team set to work. In year three, the label sold almost 3 million units and Rascal Flatts was launched.

High School Musical was 2006’s #1 Disney album; Rascal Flatts was #2. The Flatts tour generated more than $50 million on the way to multiplatinum.

Goodman was elected president of the Country Music Association’s Board of Directors. In 2007, he became part of the City of Hope Music and Entertainment

Industry Executive Board.Despite its triumphs, though, Lyric

Street was shuttered in 2010. “I moved into the Lyric Street/Disney phase of my career as a young man leading a young team,” Goodman notes. “We had a lot of success, but I missed being part of a major country-music label.”

Also in 2010, Goodman (who’d received the CMA Chairman’s Award that year) was named Co-Chair of the Music City Music Council alongside Nashville mayor Karl Dean. Dean said his partner was “the right guy to con-vince companies that Nashville is the place to be if they want to do business in the music industry.” Tasked with building a bridge between the city and the music business, Goodman focused on incubating digital media and enter-tainment start-ups, creating music-education plans for the public schools and establishing an artist residence, The Ryman Lofts, to ensure creatives had affordable housing.

He later served as his alma mater’s Executive in Residence, working on curriculum and offering input on Lipscomb’s music-business program, and did a turn at Clarence Spalding’s Maverick Management, helping

“ W E R E A L I Z E O U R Y O U N G E R FA N S A R E R E A L LY I N T O

E V E R Y T H I N G . L U K E ’ S P E O P L E A R E S T R E A M I N G A L O T O F D R A K E .

W E S E E A L O T O F A R I A N A G R A N D E A N D B I L L I E E I L I S H O N

M A R E N ’ S FA N S ’ P L AY L I S T S . O U R A R T I S T S A R E G E T T I N G B E T T E R

R A N G E , R E A C H I N G M O R E A N D D I F F E R E N T P E O P L E . ”

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Top: Rascal Flatts’ Gary LeVox and Jay DeMarcus, Goodman and Rascal Flatts’ Joe Don Rooney; bottom: with Old Dominion

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Grammys 2019: Kane Brown, Ryan Hurd, Maren Morris, Clive Davis, Rob Stringer, Goodman, Jason Iley and Luke Combs

Rascal Flatts navigate a rapidly chang-ing world. Still, once a record-company man, always a record-company man.

Sony Nashville was stagnating, and Sony Music boss Doug Morris knew it was going to take someone who understood departmental integration to get it unstuck. But

he could also see unrealized potential at Arista, Columbia, RCA Nashville and the Provident Music Group. So he welcomed Goodman to the Sony Music family.

Goodman anointed Ken Robold as EVP/COO and Steve Hodges as EVP Promotion & Artist Development, and the team got busy, with a mandate to sign what sounded like nothing else. Early on, they scooped up Maren Morris and leaned into Old Dominion and emerging superstars Luke Combs and Kane Brown, among others. And they created space for Miranda Lambert to deliver the critically acclaimed double album The Weight of These Wings.

In 2016 Sony Music Nashville saw its first half year of country album market-

share at 20.8%, up from 19.8% for all of 2015.

In 2018, four of the Top 5 songs on the year-end Mediabase Country radio chart belonged to Brown, Combs, Morris and Chris Young, and every stu-dio album they’d released debuted at #1 on the Country Albums chart.

Addressing the growing importance of streaming and alternate ways to reach fans, Goodman had told HITS in 2017: “Everything is so disrupted on a daily level. The disintermediation has taken the leverage of how we did it out of the way, so more than ever, we have to figure out how to make things that matter to consumers. People are hungry for depth and meaning; our analytics say people want more of that. We are at the nexus of art and commerce, so it’s a matter of what to do when you have content that also has great meaning to make sure it translates.”

In 2019, Sony Music Nashville scored a year-end 21.46% of current country frontline-album marketshare and enjoyed 75% of the #1 albums in country con-

sumption. Goodman’s will to lead on streaming had paid off handsomely.

With Ryan Hurd splitting the dif-ference between alt songwriter and Nashville hitmaker; newcomers like Matt Stell (via a co-venture with Weiss’ RECORDS), Niko Moon, Kameron Marlowe, Drew Green (via a co-venture with Villa 40), Jaden Hamilton and Joey Hendricks coming on strong; and big wins in signings Jameson Rodgers (via a co-venture with River House Artists) and Andrew Jannakos, artist development remains the raison d’être of the label where Kane Brown and Luke Combs have surpassed 5.6 and 7 billion career streams, respectively.

In 2020, Sony Music Nashville claimed 12 ACM trophies, more than any label group and the most in its 30-year history. At November’s CMA Awards, SMN artists won seven of a possible 11 categories, giving the label its strongest showing since 2006—further proof that the forward-thinking Randy Goodman is exactly where he belongs, doing exactly what needs to be done. n

“ P E O P L E A R E H U N G R Y F O R D E P T H A N D M E A N I N G ; O U R A N A LY T I C S S A Y P E O P L E W A N T M O R E O F

T H A T. W E A R E A T T H E N E X U S O F A R T A N D C O M M E R C E , S O I T ’ S A M A T T E R O F W H A T T O D O W H E N

Y O U H A V E C O N T E N T T H A T A L S O H A S G R E A T M E A N I N G T O M A K E S U R E I T T R A N S L A T E S . ”