Should Country Cut More Collaborations?

Albright & O’Malley’s just-released second quarter gold sort included four collaborations among the top 25 testers (the Zac Brown Band/Jimmy Buffet “Knee Deep” was the top tester this quarter). 

Others in the top 25 were Zac Brown Band/Alan Jackson, “Walking Away,” Blake Shelton/Trace Adkins, “Hillbilly Bone,” and Brad Paisley/Carrie Underwood, “Remind Me.”  Jason Aldean/Kelly Clarkson, “Don’t You Wanna Stay” was in the top 50. The Chesney/Potter duet was a bit behind that.

Collaborations have not only done well the past two years, they’ve had decent staying power. A&O’s best testers of 2011 included 3 in top 25, all in the top 10 for the year. Our research in 2010 had two in the top 25, both of which were in top 10 for the year. All five are in our top 50 this quarter.

Successful collaborations have included country-country and country-pop combinations.

This year CMT’s Crossroads featuring Carrie Underwood/Steven Tyler had the highest ratings for the show in 7 years.

I’m not at all suggesting that county needs to import artists from another format. We’re doing great, thank you very much.

But country listeners have proven very open to good collaborations. 

Meanwhile, a quick check of today’s CHR chart found 9 collaborations in the top 25 while AC had 4 and Hot AC had 3 (including the Matt Nathanson/Sugarland song).

Formats who deliver a good number of our P2s are certainly quite enthusiastic about collaborations as well.