Data-Driven Country Music Strategy – Michael Farris, Country Music Association

This transcript has been transcribed by Riverside.fm, no edits (please excuse any errors)

Sean Callanan (00:01.358)

Very happy to welcome Michael Farris. He's the Director of Business Strategy and Insights at the Country Music Association. Michael, welcome to the podcast.

Michael Farris (00:08.919)

That's great to be here, Sean. Happy to be here. it's great that we got connected at SEAT. And so really looking forward to being on today.

Sean Callanan (00:16.544)

Absolutely. As you said, we connected in Nashville at Seat and you moderated a panel, which is why I said, let's come, let's get on the podcast for a chat. every time I start my podcast, I always start asking people how they got their, how they got their start in the world of sports and entertainment. What about yourself? What was your first gig in the sports and entertainment business?

Michael Farris (00:39.821)

Well, you know, I thought I wanted to be a doctorate and really like go into being a professor and teaching and I was always interested in sports management and the research side and so I really dove in from the industry on the market research end But funny enough my first job was actually as a ticket box office intern for the Western and Southern Open and Cincinnati made my way through

PR internships as well. I worked for an all female PR firm in Cincinnati. And so I try to kind of stretch my worldview about what was happening. But really those were my first two gigs prior to going to grad school and really then kind of jumpstarting my career from there.

Sean Callanan (01:25.048)

So after grad school and after doing those things, was your first gig? Was it the one at the Aspire Group?

Michael Farris (01:32.959)

It was, yeah. I was really lucky to be able to go to Central Florida and get to build a relationship with Bill Sutton. And he connected me with Bernie Mullen at the Aspire Group and we hit it off. And I enjoyed a five and a half year career there to get going. know, we talked earlier that I thought I wanted to be a professor. I thought that was going to be kind of my career path. Bernie and

The crew at Aspire was my real world PhD, as I call it. I got to study alongside him, closely as running his consulting and research department. And so was five and a half years, seven countries, 80 plus projects across the world and within the states, all different codes of sport. And so it was really exciting.

Sean Callanan (02:22.89)

And that's the thing I wanted to ask. mean, it is normally that, you know, people leave college and they have this idealized, you know, what it will be. And then they get in and it is that first job or that first mentor. Like you said, that PhD was at a spy group because you got to work with multiple properties, multiple sports and multiple markets. Was that sort of the piece that the eye opener of the way the different properties, entertainment, sport do things?

Michael Farris (02:29.772)

you

Michael Farris (02:51.912)

At 100%, you know, and I was that stereotypical, you know, student that was like, I'm not going to go work in tickets. know, everybody does that. Hey, first job, you know, go learn how, you know, the business really makes money. And I was so interested on the research and just kind of the strategy, how, how does it work on the fan side? So being able to go work with someone like Bernie, who's made his whole career about, you know, knowing fans and how do you build experiences along that?

How do you then translate that across all different aspects? I was getting thrown into the deep end. And what I loved most about Aspire was every single time I went to a property, because Aspire at that time was kind of a mixed mode, right? We had our fan relationship management centers where we would be selling tickets and servicing fans at a wide variety of colleges. You know, we were doing rugby clubs and all these different pieces all across the world.

And every time I went in there, was an education on culture, community, how businesses work, how do you sell? And so I was never directly trained as a salesperson, but I had some of the best salespeople in the sports industry that I got to work with day to day coaching me. And I got thrilled about it. And funny enough now, like I spend a significant amount of my time thinking about ticket strategy and sales and service. And from something I swore off doing when I was in my early twenties, and now I've made a career on it.

It's kind of exciting, but it's like one of those things when you don't know and you kind of think you have an anticipation of what your career wants to be and it's so great to just be kind of pushed in a way, learn, get the exposure, understand the wide view that's out there. It's been a lot of fun.

Sean Callanan (04:35.982)

Absolutely. then, I mean, it's a common theme with all of my guests that where they, they find a little bit of the secret sources. I'm bringing in revenue in the door, I'm always going to be wanted. And that's why if you don't, you go, if this research then helps more people, the cheeks and the seats, the thing, the game we're all in, you know, you've got to be able to tie that. And that's, and also that sales piece of being able to tell people, this market resource, or research or this fan research or us.

diving in on this segment is gonna bring in money down the track. And so having multiple success stories and case studies must have put you in good stead.

Michael Farris (05:14.828)

Yeah, I think that's one of the things that broke me out of my shell, honestly, you because when you're a researcher and I was trained more academically, I would say initially from the research end and, you know, doing things like looking at fan identification scales and how it impacts how you might build a fan and thinking about how do I get my paper at the sport marketing association, right? It's a really different mindset than going to a collegiate client.

Sean Callanan (05:39.075)

Mm-hmm.

Michael Farris (05:44.247)

who their reports tended to sit on shelves. It was like a moment in time and like they got this heavy handed report that that moment in that room, they probably like, these are great things. It's interesting. then tomorrow, the priority shift or their time doesn't give them the ability to think. And working at a place like Aspire, the job was to get people in the doors to sell seats. It was to grow a fan base. And so I had the training.

And I was pushed and told some brute honesty about the work I was doing to shape that into where, okay, your research, what is truly the action I need to take from this? What is really going to change this? And I think where I was really pulled out of my shell by people like Bill Fagan and Bernie is being able to apply it more broadly than just doing the work. so going in and doing workshops or bringing in our sales leaders and say, how would you use this data point? How would you drive it? And

We're going in, Sean, to places where their marketing strategy was built on the athletic director, just seeing their billboards. And that's what they thought was successful. To then that, you know, that collegiate property wanted us back every single year because they were getting hard data. They were using it as a three hour workshop. They were building action plans from it. And we were coming back and checking in and just keeping that work going. And I think that's what got exciting is like once that clicked for me.

that it's not just like research for research sake, or it's not just like, hey, you should be doing this and someone coming in and telling you that, but it's really helping them on how to do it and just being a support for them. That's when it got really exciting. And I was like, this is what I want to be doing with my career. And Aspire just like was the aha moment for me on that.

Sean Callanan (07:28.63)

Absolutely, absolutely. So in 2018, you came to the country music association in a consumer research role. What was that initial role? Going into a permanent role as opposed to that consultant of checking in and not really having the skin in the game, but either directing people and setting up the process and then handing it back. How was it going into a role and owning it?

Michael Farris (07:58.753)

Yeah, I mean, that's one of the main reasons where I was kind of influenced about transitioning. mean, to be honest, it was more of a family life cycle thing that kind of forced me out. was traveling quite a bit. I would say like 60 to 70 % of my time I was on the road and I had my first child on the way and my wife was like, this ain't gonna work. And I looked for another passion point and I've always been.

really been on the music side. I'm a massive Bluegrass fan, you know, kind of raised on country music being from Kentucky. And when the opportunity came open, it was actually a step back in my career. You know, I was kind of in this place at Aspire where I was like really leading, you know, research and strategy department and being coached up by C level execs. And I was probably in a lot of rooms that, you know, I wasn't ready for at that moment. And I was being coached into them. And it was really special place to be.

But when it was right for the family, one of the things I also thought about too, Sean, was like, okay, this is my time to see, do I have the chops? Do I have the ability to go to a place, put the work in, learn from them, understand what the strategy is, do research on behalf of them, and then actually achieve some goals together as a team? And that's what's been really special about the Country Music Association, because we have the ability to do that, not just with our country music fans, but also on the…

industry side because we're serving them as a trade association. But it's been really special to actually put your hands on it and then grow. And so when I was brought in on the consumer research side, honestly, my focus was really different than Aspire because I thought a lot more about what was happening in the country music industry and how do we talk about that as a trade association versus what was taking place necessarily to fill a house, you know, for a sport team.

Sean Callanan (09:51.16)

So yeah, just give some explainers to people who don't know, I guess, what the country music session does. You sort of talk about it as a trade association. are the key pillars of what CMA does?

Michael Farris (10:03.82)

Most people are gonna hear CMA and immediately think about November and watching the CMA Awards, especially if they're a pretty engaged country music fan and we're the pinnacle award show for the country music format. We also put on a four-day music festival in Nashville in early June. It's one of the largest festivals in the US. But beyond that, both of those entities

really support our work to uplift what's happening in the industry. And so we have over 7,000 members that work all across the music industry landscape. have artists, we have people that are marketers and people who think about publishing deals and songwriters to the rigors, going out and supporting one of the amphitheater acts that are touring. Anybody that works in Buoy's Country Music can be a member.

of ours and we provide a slew of benefits. One of the primary benefits being things like research and making sure they're aware and understand trends. But we also do things like providing health insurance, right? So if you're a CMA member, you can qualify to get health insurance through us. We support massive mental health initiatives and we try to make sure that we're constantly on where the industry is going and how do we then support those individuals. We have a Women's Leadership Academy and all these ways we can up

uplift the professionalism. But we also have a foundation that works in music education. And so the proceeds for CMA Fest directly support the foundation as much as it also supports the trade association. we have kind of a broad skew. Like there's a fan focus, of course, with our two kind of TV properties and also our CMA Country Christmas event as well. And we sell tickets for those. There's a TV show. There's a fan base to build.

Sean Callanan (11:48.845)

Yep.

Michael Farris (11:58.681)

But then on this other piece, there's an industry element, as well as the foundation and kind of the music education space. So we're thinking about all three of those buckets across every single team here at CMA. And our staff kind of rose in that all three of those directions at once, if you will.

Sean Callanan (12:15.31)

It does give a really wide remit because it's not, you know, I always try to get a sports analogy. It's sort of, it's not quite the same as like a players association. It's sort of a hybrid of what a players association would be and a league because you're the steward of the, of, of, of the industry to a certain degree. And you're doing that wider research and, providing that, uh, you know, that data and insights for, you know, the whole, uh, the whole industry. So it, that, that piece must be exciting to have, how we run massive events.

We run a big media event, but then we're also doing outreach and supporting the overall industry.

Michael Farris (12:53.536)

Yeah, I when I try to relate it back to sport for people that I've worked with, I think a little bit about like the world and ancient, it's in St. Andrews, right? Where they're responsible for the game of golf and they're responsible for the rules of golf. I mean, we're not making the rules for country music, right? But as an organization, they're shaping and shifting how golf is played. They're working at the club level. They're working from it on a back end industry, but they also run one of the…

biggest golf tournaments every single year. And they have a massive organization about participating in golf and watching golf and being engaged with golf. But the USTA is very similar to that as well, right? And so I think when you look at those types of bodies that have kind of a governing sense, that would be the most akin to CMA. Although again, we're not governing how country music is done. That is from our artists and our songwriters. Those are the creatives. That's the heartbeat.

And country music means a lot of different things now, right? That's not something we're necessarily defining. We are here to amplify it. We're here to make sure that our industry and our fans are able to access it and it's growing. And so that is, yeah, when you look at those governing bodies, there's league pieces that kind of plays in both of those, which is really fun.

Sean Callanan (14:09.198)

So your current role, Director of Business Strategy and Insights, what does that entail? What does that oversee?

Michael Farris (14:15.07)

Yeah, so I sit currently on our business strategy team, which actually houses all of our live events elements. like the team that is actually executing the four day music festival from the backend of stage designs and all those pieces live on business strategy. You have my teams, which I'll talk about, and then our partnerships team as well. So we all live in one team. We all kind of really, at the end of the day, we're all helping each other kind of achieve the goal of executing CMA, especially from the

Sean Callanan (14:37.102)

Mm-hmm.

Michael Farris (14:44.972)

external side point. My three particular functions are ticketing. So I get to lead all elements of ticketing across CMA Fest, our country Christmas event, as well as the awards. So scale of ticket strategy, how we're scaling the house and filling the house to all of our new premium pieces, to how we're working across our venues with box offices and what are we doing from a strategic angle to kind of grow revenue across that. That all kind of fits within that ticketing remit.

I also lead our insights team. Insights is more geared towards our trade associations. So we're doing initiatives like understanding the diverse audiences with country music and doing custom research on that. We're going out and building country segmentations. And right now we're actually in a massive project where we're looking at how do we define and create a tool that allows us to be able to define who country music fans are here in the United States.

Sean Callanan (15:20.6)

Okay.

Michael Farris (15:43.341)

Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. All four of those markets are in our study right now. So we're doing that type of work. And then the last function that I'm involved with in Getalita is our data architecture team, which is in essence a business intelligence team. It's all of our data warehousing, all of our dashboarding, CRN. We like to say that we're the process team. We're going in and talking to people about what the processes are, and we're thinking about how can we allow people to see more into that? How do we be more efficient? And we work.

extremely collaboratively across our marketing and IT teams. So what's fun about my role is I feel like we're all very centralized. Like if it's a hub and spoke model, like we're the centralized unit that's working and supporting all these other functions across the business. So it's a highly collaborative role that we're trying to really ingrain across all of CMA.

Sean Callanan (16:23.586)

Mm-hmm.

Sean Callanan (16:35.328)

It is, yeah, it is very much that. And a lot of teams and leagues have tried it is that like that agency model. It's like you're the internal agency servicing all the departments and making sure it works and it does stay connected.

Michael Farris (16:48.864)

Yeah. Yeah, there's definitely a similarity to that. And I think what's unique from my standpoint on how we've set it up here on, on CMA Zen, like our data architecture function, for instance, you know, bi-weekly, we have representatives across every single department coming in the room. think we're dang near 16 ish people that meet bi-weekly to talk about data across their company. And I know when I've talked to colleagues and support that isn't always happening.

at a lot of places, right? They feel kind of siloed and then they're just pushing reports or advocating for budget and how do I get more heads to support all this? And yeah, truly kind of what you're talking about, like that internal source, we've taken that as how do we at least just empower our teams to keep moving forward? And a big piece of that is making them owners and really involved in those processes with us.

Sean Callanan (17:39.863)

I always liked talking to the data and BI geeks at conferences like SEAT because it fascinates me. Again, I remember 10 years ago, people were talking about big data. It was a thing, big data. But now there's so much data. So you as a researcher, how do you decide what data to ingest or pull in so it becomes useful? Because again, back to your Aspire days, it's like…

Michael Farris (17:51.596)

you

Sean Callanan (18:06.348)

you can be spending days just swimming in the data, analyzing the data, put it into the matrix, come up with different versions of it. But how do you start that process of, because there is just a data over well now in that we're getting, you know, live ticketing feeds, we're getting, you know, live data from social, your CRMs are becoming smarter. How do you tackle it as a, as a data and insights guy? Where do you start?

Michael Farris (18:08.737)

Yeah.

Michael Farris (18:30.54)

This question hits a little bit close to home this week. We just met yesterday about rebalancing priorities, right? Because you realize sometimes you just, you keep getting excited about data, right? You just keep building, you keep pushing things in the pipeline and you're, what are we really doing with this? You know, so outside of just hitting pause sometimes and just being honest with ourselves, when we first started what we call data architecture here, and the reason I use that term is because it sounds super official.

And so it's a nice way for people to like go, okay, they're building something kind of legitimate here. And now it's just kind of stuck with us. But, you know, when I first got to CMA, this didn't exist. And there were, there were all these people trying to collect data on their own. I mean, you can start to piece apart all the concerns on that end being like just from a data security angle, you know, and other reasons. And

So we formed a collaborative, right? There were three of us that went on this journey of saying, hey, we need to figure this out. And, you know, it took a little bit of like having no pride of authorship because the first thing we did was we went to every single team and said, what matters to you? What sources do you have? What can we do to best support you? And there were over 40 plus different data sources that were very legitimate, nothing being connected. And because of CMA's role, right, you talk about how broad we are.

There's a lot of unique functions that data has to support. Like we're going out and booking artists for a music festival, like over 250 artists every single year getting booked on that. There's a lot of data input. Who are the artist teams? What are the booking plots? What do they need? How are they licensed? How are we paying the musicians on the backend? What's actually happening when they're actually on the TV show and what timings are they done? Right? There's a bunch of data in that single use case, let alone ticketing, let alone what we're doing from a

Sean Callanan (20:22.253)

Yep.

Michael Farris (20:23.158)

public relations input, what are we doing from our industry relations and finance team? So Sean, the way we were kind of doing it, was like, man, it's almost overwhelming at some point. And so I think we've been really honest with ourselves, one, taking time and really having great open conversation to say, what's really priority first for us? What's gonna drive the most impact? The decision on our end was the consumer, the fan was most important at that time because there was a lot of people running in different directions. And so,

That was our piece on the data architecture side is bring all that in. And now we're expanding where our next focus is industry. And so we try to bucket an umbrella at to where, you now we're trying to create an artist's ID, similar to like a master data management model that a lot of teams will use for their fans. We now have to create that on the artist's level because we have artists and, you know, booking platforms and we also have consumption data on those artists and all these pieces is how do we make sure we truly have one unified artist profile? So.

I think our piece is like, we are not short of data. What we're short on is resources. So what's going to always be most effective? Let's check in on those things. Let's have honest conversations. And this is just in the data warehousing and CRM and dashboard world, let alone in insights where, you know, we can sit here all day long and talk about what are all the data sources for indicating the health of country music, you know, and how do you look at, you know, those pieces, which is a completely

completely other realm that we get to talk about. So I'm probably gonna, you're gonna have to stop me, because I'll just be like snowballing and all the different data and how it's been a journey for us, but.

Sean Callanan (21:57.903)

No, no, but it's, but it is the, because you've got, I guess that not split focus, but you've got so many different parts of the, of the role and also, you know, that you're servicing. So, you know, it can just be, yeah, we, who are the artists that we want to book for the CMA festival that we know will drive people in and fit the profile for what we're doing. And so you've got to have, have, have that data there. So I completely understand having that, you know, that, you know, 360 degree view of the artists.

because then you can level that up to start getting that industry overview. And you've got, I guess, different data than sports in streaming charts and those kinds of things that do give you some of that granular info on the artists.

Michael Farris (22:48.368)

100%. And, you know, often we get asked the question is like, what's the impact we have when an artist plays CMA Fest or when an artist is on the CMA Awards? What is the impact? Well, we should start with that question, right? And go, what are the data sources that matter? You know, tear them off and start to build that. And I mean, that's really the journey where we're at now. Like we feel really good on the fan side at the moment. You know, we've

set up, you know, what every sport team would have, you know, a full integrated system, segments are moving back and forth to email. Like we have things grooving on that end. Now on the industry side, it's like, what are all the metrics that matter? And so we've built things like a full production history where we're uploading all of the, you know, time codes for every single one of our TV shows and who are all the musicians and artists on those and what time did they hit? Because on the backend, now we can overlay that with ratings.

We can do minute by minute ratings. We can then take streaming consumption results. We can look at YouTube videos on the backend with all of our social media metrics that we're tagging, all those social media pieces by artists or by different partners. And so if we pull that all in, now we can actually automate that question. And that's really been our focus. I we're probably another six to eight months out of that becoming a reality for us. But I think that's the power of something we get to do. And I was mentioning,

that so much data on the actual country music itself, you highlighted that too. And so we just finished building our latest integration, which was to Luminate. Luminate is a consumption data tool. It powers the billboard charts. So whenever you see like a hot 100, things like that, it illuminates on the backend. So we're pushing in 30,000 country music songs every single week, broken down on a daily basis into our warehouse.

Sean Callanan (24:34.55)

Okay. Yep.

Michael Farris (24:48.444)

not only is this going to help all of our artists ID and artist report cards and knowing the impact we have, but I get really excited because our team, overall staff can ask incredible questions and we can go solve this, you know, and we can go think about what are the things you care about within country music and let's go see if we can explore that. And that's going to be a data set that's probably pretty unique from a lot of your listeners where, you know, they don't necessarily always have that participation or there's like some type of

transactional data out there that's kind of really neat on the activity side that we get to work with.

Sean Callanan (25:25.258)

Absolutely. mean, yeah, it's both the the overwhelm of data and all the opportunity, but then it is the is the piece of, like you said, that pause that what what's going to move the needle? What do people want? Because you can just be you could just be, you know, polishing data models and, and creating graphs, and they'll just end up like those reports you're creating an aspire that like, you know, got printed out. And as soon as they get printed out, you know, they're not getting read. And so, you know, so you need to make sure that they're actionable.

Michael Farris (25:51.883)

Yeah. Well, well, and like, that's where it's like, you know, being really transparent. I'm sure a lot of people are dealing with this, but we don't always kind of admit the simplicity of this challenge is it's really exciting to build. It's super exciting to build super exciting to think about, man, I want this data set. want to keep, I want to do this innovation. This will be something that gets senior leadership exciting, whatever.

And we don't always think about the invisible load of then managing that data set or managing those dashboards or managing how to train people and retrain people and retrain them. Right. And so when I mentioned this was close to me right now is like the conversation we had on rebalancing priorities was, Hey, we got to make sure that what we build is, not just used, but it's ingrained in the culture. And if we don't feel like it's ingrained into what our staff.

are doing every single day, then we kind of need to back burner some things that feel really innovative because we need to make sure our existing tools are so well used. Because then when we do the innovative stuff, it's second nature, right? Whereas if we build the innovation, I know people deal with this too, you build the innovation, you're upset no one's using the first thing that you built. Well, it's because we didn't take the time to let that truly bake. And so, I mean, that's a constant pool intention with.

I think the scope of what we're trying to do, fan industry, tons of data sources is making sure we kind of have that balancing act more aligned.

Sean Callanan (27:25.662)

Absolutely. It's not like field of dreams. You can't just build it and that will come. You need to build it. Make sure they use it. If they're using it, then it's worthwhile continuing to sort of have that cycle. I to move away from the, I guess, the data tech build piece around the ticketing role. I mean, we've seen in the sports space, the live experience and the premium experience and leveling up the experience to be a big driver. Obviously, you run CMAFests.

Michael Farris (27:28.908)

Yeah.

Michael Farris (27:40.001)

Yeah.

Sean Callanan (27:55.137)

and obviously got that ticketing piece and the insights piece. So how do you go about supporting, I guess that trend, because I'm assuming that trend and you know, we're seeing music concerts and that all level up and everyone's looking over their shoulder at other industries. How are you trying to level up what you're trying to do in the event space?

Michael Farris (28:12.512)

Yeah, I think the first piece on our end is like we are formalizing our ticket practices a lot. I would probably say that when I first was able to kind of start getting into the ticket role here, we let a lot of it go, right? We were putting it in kind of automatic. You know, we had a box office of record with a venue, know, TV was in the building. Like we kind of just threw it up. We were

you know, a little undervalued, we weren't maximizing all the seats. And so for our end, like to match where the industry is, we've had to spend about three years investing in making sure our inventory and pricing and, okay, let's take this in house because it makes sense or let's make sure we're building resources and resources aren't just people, it's tools and things like that. Let's change how we think about that. We've been really investing in that. I think what's great is now we are on the springboard.

to what do our fans want next? And we're building our plans for what is our fan service philosophy, right? It's not a question we've solved yet. So let's bring all that stuff to the table. We get a really incredible opportunity that in 2027, we'll be able to move into the new Nissan Stadium that the Titans are building. It's gonna be a really incredible facility. So it also provides us an opportunity to kind of pause for a moment and go, what is the fan experience for CMAFest? What do we want that to be?

What do our fans want it to be? What's the TV product that we want to have? Like, how do you balance those pieces while maintaining the P &L, right? It's not just about gross revenue. It's about the P &L, right? At the end of the day, we like to talk about gross, big numbers are interesting and people tie them. But I think we at CMA really try to talk about that P &L and we can get to it in very different ways. So we're actually, even just this week going and starting to ideate that.

What's the modern concert experience that you might see at a Coldplay, a Luke Cum show? What are they doing? And how do we take pieces we really like? How do we make sure it's still CMA Fest and feels really unique? Because it's pretty much a jukebox of the most amazing country music for four nights in a row. So how do we make it special defining those pieces? So I would say that's an area we're still really growing and evolving in. We've had some massive strides on the Ticket Inn.

Michael Farris (30:36.318)

And now we're starting to really actualize. Like we're moving to that last stage of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, if you will. Like we've gotten our house in order. We got our psychological needs set. We've moved onto those things and we're starting to really get to the top of the pyramid and starting to actualize who we really want to become.

Sean Callanan (30:51.564)

Yeah, I mean, for mine, I do think sports is learning a lot from the music industry. mean, that, that premium tier of ticket that, you know, he's the exclusive ticket that might have the meet and greet or the backstage pass or that kind of stuff. It has been a long, long stable, but it keeps getting leveled up in the, the music and concert industries. Like, you know, the ticketing gets launched. You know, we're recording this, you know, Taylor Swift was just on a, you know, I was on a podcast and broke the internet again, but like those kinds of models of

Michael Farris (31:08.652)

Yeah.

Sean Callanan (31:20.482)

hey, this is how an album gets dropped. But like those concert launches and the way that they're priced is something that sports is looking to do in their premium experience base. you can't do a meet and greet at a hockey game or a basketball game before the game, but like, how can they do that experience?

Michael Farris (31:38.007)

Yeah, well, and I'm sorry that I'm not Taylor Swift dropping my album announcement on your podcast. I know that would really help you. But, you know, I think that's when I look a lot more of like my comparison of like working in music and working in sport, ticketing tends to be where I kind of find center is. You know, we've been doing chalk talks and all of these really incredible group experiences for so long. And I think what's interesting about music is.

You know, where sports sometimes takes those experiences and thinks about them as a group ticket by like a quantity play, because we have a lot of games and all these pieces. Users come into a city for one night and then they're leaving. You know, how do I maximize that time? And so being able to do, you know, a three song acoustic set, high end ticket, some type of merch item, you know, it might, might be a low lift, might be medium high lift, but it's a way to really push the revenue piece. And on the CMA end,

Sean Callanan (32:16.76)

Yeah.

Michael Farris (32:35.2)

What's really driving this is fans want to be as close as possible. They want to feel as in it as they can. And we see that in sport. I think in music, they want to experience that to where they don't feel like they're just in the house, right? They feel like they're almost creating that vibe. At CMA Fest this year, we released a brand new premium product. We called it Gold Rope. I should give credit to my Aspire days as we riffed on Gold Rope concepts all the time, but we actually…

provided the opportunity for fans to get a full credential to the festival. And so they had a handler and they could tell us what shows they wanted to go to. they want to go see Megan Moroney open at our Riverfront stage on Thursday. They were in the photo pit line that no fan gets access to. They're in there with the media looking up and just having a time of their life. And then at the nighttime experience, we actually do not publicly sell a pit. It's all casted, right, for TV. It's for a look.

Sean Callanan (33:30.862)

Mm.

Michael Farris (33:32.161)

we actually put those fans there. We taped off where they were right next to the stage. And each time we had different fans in there and Blake Shelton's performing and holding the hand of the girl of a family that got in those spots. And it's like, I think there's a lot more of like where music has an opportunity during the show to create those personal moments, right? You can actually interact with someone. You're not on a field trying to win a game. And I think music's done a great job doing that. we've translated that to the words too.

Sean Callanan (33:49.709)

Yep.

Michael Farris (34:00.912)

We're selling front row seats to the awards. It's the second year that we're doing that. First two rows on the floor. You're actually sitting in front of the artist, believe it or and you're turning around and you see your favorite artists. It's a really high-end product, but we're thinking about how do we really stretch that, create really incredible moments, and try to be aggressive. And music promoters have been doing that for a long time and doing a great job of it.

Sean Callanan (34:01.135)

Hmm.

Sean Callanan (34:10.755)

Yeah.

Michael Farris (34:28.518)

And so we're looking at doing those things. We're a little bit more hands-on. I would say we take a lot more from the sport model than we do from your traditional music promoter mindset. But it's great because we get to leverage both sides. We have so many great board members who are willing to kind of tell us, hey, this is it's working the promoter side. This is a way to maybe kind of have a low lift and high impact. And we get to pull from both ends. It's really fun.

Sean Callanan (34:51.662)

I mean, the usefulness of having those properties is one, obviously revenue generating and those kinds of things, but also it's your petri dish, it's your way to test things for the industry. You're saying, well, we're seeing what's happening in concerts, we're seeing artists having success here, we're gonna try it with ours, we're gonna do our own little twist, whether it's a gold rope or giving it. And then you go back to education mode, trade association mode and tell.

promoters and you tell, you know, logistics people and venues, this is what worked.

Michael Farris (35:22.572)

That's it. I think we, love the term Petri dish because I think that we're a culture at CMA where we're not afraid to talk about ideas. Let's test them. it doesn't work, why does it not work? Let's fix it or let's get rid of it, you know, or let's keep making it better. But on the ticket side, you know, we've partnered with Elevate last year to help with some of these premium pieces. And I think a lot of it is taking things we see work in sport, seeing what's happening in

in the music side and how do we make sure we can take those best practices and make them kind of unique to us. And that's what's great about working with an L of A who's bringing in going, hey, this is what's working at F1 or this is what's working with our NASCAR events who can't have a similar fan base to us. And so we're going in and leaning into those pieces and then saying, okay, this is what's unique about us. And how do we make sure our industry still

is number one kind of in our thought and making sure that the artists have an incredible experience. Because if we're doing a fan piece, we're designing premium programs on the fan side, Sean, we can't do that at the expense of our industry or our artists. And, you know, we're not this like just solely for profit mindset, right? And so we get to balance all those elements.

Sean Callanan (36:38.99)

Mm.

Sean Callanan (36:44.862)

That's terrific. Now in your role across the ticketing data architecture or, know, being on that data journey is a term that I use. A lot of people talk about where they're, you you're never at the destination. You're always, you're always moving. One of the growing topics in the areas is AI and the opportunities and challenges that is presenting. What does that mean? What does that mean to you and how are you tackling it?

Michael Farris (37:08.204)

Yeah, you know, AI, I think is can be a sticky topic, you know, within our industry, especially on the creative side. So it'd really interesting to, I think, see how that turns out for the music industry as a whole. But, you know, I think when you look at it from a more of a business sense, there's a lot of conversation about how do you, how do you drive it across the full spectrum? And so, you know, I think it's really easy for us to think about, okay, how do we put AI agents within our warehouse and allow people to tap into it and get data easier? How?

We've talked to partners that are like, we're creating AI agents that you can talk to that feel like it's a fan. And you can just ask them questions back and forth and get to learn them because you've uploaded all your research information. That stuff's great. But I think we're also thinking really practical. We're a staff. When we talk about really broad focus, we're a staff with a lot of departments. And each department has a slim number of people. How do we make it more efficient? And I kind of like the fact that our finance team

our individual who oversees finances is actually kind of a tech nerd on the back end. I don't know if he would admit that straight up, but he's like, he gets excited because he's like, man, I did this coding on the back end and now I know how to do these things. And we actually have all of our finance data, you know, wrapped into our warehouse. And so we're talking about how do we use AI or different forms of kind of automated processes to actually help with general ledger entries? How do we take that off our team so now we can think and do our reporting or think about our finances different? How do we create PNLs and bucket them differently?

And it's like, we don't often think about that as a focal point. We get really excited about the fan in or consumer, you know, kind of revenue piece. And for us, I get really excited about the back out. I'm like, that's an incredible use case, right? It's one that should work. It's a great example. You get success and go, okay, here's our next way of doing it. But it's fully applicable to other things we do. You know, if we can create some type of coding exercise, we should be able to do that across, you know, different things we do on the survey side or different things that we're doing with our production Bible and artist IDs.

Sean Callanan (38:46.626)

Yeah.

Michael Farris (39:04.372)

So that's kind of where we're thinking about it is like small steps, really think about practical things, efficiencies.

Sean Callanan (39:09.038)

I think that's the thing. It is about, I guess, setting up some structure around it. But that use case of the closet geek, so to speak, that wants to get in a bit of coding in the finance team, like you want the people who are intentionally curious about the technology and how it can help them, because they know the problem. And so back to that problem, you don't want to build something that they don't want. If they go,

you know, getting these PDFs all the time and having to transcribe them and put them in the system is real pain. And it's real drain on my day. Can it do it? And we're like, well, yes, it can. Let's look at it. And that, being curious and then sort of having some process on how to do it, but also having it company wide, because everyone's using it in some form or another, whether it's to help them write an email or to, you know, take the meeting notes from a zoom meeting. Like it's all being used in different, in different ways, but sort of

getting some structure around it, like, I guess rewarding the people who are going to be curious, because the people who don't want it or, you know, or aren't curious don't want it. Like they're quite happy with their process. So I think it's, it is one that, you know, obviously that I'm a big believer in the, you know, AI automation, how can you make things happen quicker? You know, I'll hit a few buttons after this interview and a chunk of the podcast production is done. because I'm, I'm just leaning into the tools, but you need to have that, guys, different parts of your org.

Michael Farris (40:13.942)

Yeah.

Sean Callanan (40:34.958)

and be champions for it a little bit.

Michael Farris (40:37.632)

a hundred percent. mean, I really like where you pick champions. And I think it goes back to our data philosophy and how the team has done, right? Bi-weekly, we're bringing people together. Well, that's because they're champions. They're our power users. They're the ones that are going to go talk to their team about, was able to do this. you know, we've been asking our team when they say, hey, we really like to see this edit in CRM. We want to do this dev. And I think our first question is, well, what's the intensity and value of it?

How many hours or minutes are you spending on it? If we created this, what's the routine? And then educating them on how much development time it really takes. So now it's a collaborative decision on building. It's the same thing on the AI side, right? Because everything on the AI side sounds simple in theory. It takes a lot of work and execution and making sure that the data is accurate. It's consistent. It's doing the right things. And so we're asking those questions a lot. And I think that's what's great about a finance use case where I know that the person in there

He's going to partner with IT. They're going to build this. He's going to be monitoring it like nothing else. He's going to be so stuck to it. So it's going to work. He's going to champion it and we're going be able to go, Hey, this actually took this amount of time to do. It's not like flipping a light switch. And if you're going to be on that journey, we'll go with you and you can iterate with us. You can see all the sachets gets made. It's not always pretty, but if you are a champion and you're dedicated and you're energetic, we're going to get to an endpoint that is going to be beneficial.

Sean Callanan (42:00.547)

Well, you're in a role where you're enough to see the 30,000 full view of the country music industry. What excites you about country music going forward?

Michael Farris (42:12.202)

I think the most exciting thing that's happening right now is the broadening of the spectrum of what is country music. I think there's so many young artists making really incredible sounds and they have their own unique stories and they're coming from all over. And because there's so much excitement about kind of the shape of what is country expanding and the international enthusiasm.

country music is just really strong. In the United Kingdom, country is 2 % of all music streams in that market. Australia, massive growth rates, Canada, Germany, mean, most of the markets we track internationally, country music is outgrowing the industry. And it's been happening consistently for the past two to three years. And so I think there's just a lot of momentum in it. It doesn't feel like it's slowing down, because we're still seeing growth after last year.

with Beyonce's just massive hit, Shabuzy having incredible success staying at the top of the charts. Dasha has been really important in our national markets, let alone having artists like a Megan Maroney, Bailey Zimmerman, these really young acts coming and really taking hold. And I think that's what gets exciting. It's not just one thing. There isn't just like 10 artists that are just being really successful and it's carrying the weight. There's a lot of movement and a lot of different markets and a lot of different fans starting to come into.

what it means to be a country music fan and exploring. And I think for us, we could talk for days about that. That's what excites us is who's a country music fan, why, from where, how do we keep going? How do we build live events for them? How do we make sure we're tapping into them and getting them attached? Like that's exciting for us. And it doesn't seem like it's slowing down.

Sean Callanan (43:49.379)

Yep.

Sean Callanan (44:00.311)

And I guess the exciting piece, know, we sometimes we talk in sport of, you know, that chasing the, you know, chasing the younger fan. They've got, you know, season ticket holders that are over 50 and rusted on not going anywhere, but that chasing of the younger fan. But that's not it. Like, that's not a problem for country music. Like it is a, it is this one going wider from a demographic point of view, but also you're getting all of that, younger demographic, as these new artists come up.

Michael Farris (44:28.214)

a hundred percent. And you know, the, the thing that I like most is like, it's easy as data people. want to talk about percentages, but I also love the anecdotals. I love talking to promoters that are like, man, I've been in Germany for decades and we've switched from, you know, kind of older leaning fans that wear cowboy hats almost look like they're doing cosplay coming to country shows to, you know,

Sean Callanan (44:35.522)

Yep. Yep.

Michael Farris (44:55.306)

really young hip kids, there's a vibe. And we hear that all over. And I think when you start to, when people see something, they start to believe it, it gets really exciting. And so yeah, I think our challenge, this is the fun piece, is like, we're not necessarily building a marketing campaign for a sport team that's attached to a city or some type of sport complex where it's like wins and losses. We want to drive that. And because of that, we have a fan base that's really broad.

Sean Callanan (45:14.606)

Mmm.

Michael Farris (45:22.358)

So how do you keep the younger fans happy and it's fresh and it's exciting and you love it? And this is a CMA Fest problem, right? How do you keep your fans that live on the older spectrum really like a certain type of country music and they're coming to four nights at a festival, they might see an act that doesn't hit their vibe. But hey, are we delivering an overall experience that if you look at those groups, they would say, hey, the vast majority of my experience, absolute love and it spoke to me. I think that's an interesting challenge that we get to deal with is our fan base gets stretched out so much with way different expectations.

Sean Callanan (45:30.861)

Yep.

Sean Callanan (45:44.92)

Yep.

Michael Farris (45:51.917)

for what they believe the product should be. And then how do you deliver that, communicate it, and engage them in that process?

Sean Callanan (45:58.913)

Especially in that festival model, like it is, you're effectively segmenting the festival with segmenting the audience and knowing that you've got to have some old faves there. And that's why that rusted on, you know, your current audience or your older audience goes, but the new, younger market, but also from that experience point of view, whether it's the way the bars are set up or all the areas. love, I think it was Sporting KC that…

they built their stadium and effectively segmented their stadium. Like one end was for the active support, this was a bar that was specifically for younger folk who were sort of watching a game in the background while they were at a bar. It's like you just have, you just now designed for that wider demographic and for multiple segments.

Michael Farris (46:33.366)

Yeah.

Michael Farris (46:42.484)

a hundred percent. Like the, kind of speaks to me from my Aspire days. We got to do a project for the Lancashire County Cricket Club. And it was this whole cradle to grave, right? With cricket, which is a sport, which is predominantly not thought of as youthful, right? And they're doing test cricket and, really high end, you know, global vision. And it's like, how do you create the experience and house that drives that? And I think a lot of that has impacted me when I've come to CMA Fest is we in essence have to think through that cradle to grave and

Sean Callanan (46:52.942)

Hmm.

Michael Farris (47:11.912)

Also then on the artist experience, how are you delivering what they would want to see at those stages? Like what are they wanting to see from their audience? But we also know that over 80 % of our fans are discovering new artists that they are then engaging with after. And for us, we want that number as high as possible, right? And so we want to introduce, we want to take someone who's, you know, maybe a later stage country fan, see someone new and go, whoa, that spoke to me. I just enjoyed something I didn't think and vice versa.

Sean Callanan (47:28.557)

Yeah.

Michael Farris (47:41.093)

we want to create those moments. So you'll see in our programming, we kind of mix it up a bit, right? It's the story kind of intertwines. And, you know, where I think in a sport model, Kansas City, Lancashire County, you might want to bring them in in your family stand. And then how do you graduate them to slightly higher price tickets? How do you then do this? How do you get them into club? And it's like, it's truly the escalator motif or an elevator, know, whichever way you want to look at it.

Sean Callanan (48:00.153)

Yep.

Sean Callanan (48:05.774)

Hmm.

Michael Farris (48:09.686)

But with us, it's like, how do you more create something where it feels more combined and it's more organic in nature?

Sean Callanan (48:17.838)

Absolutely. Michael, really do appreciate you taking the time. I want to get to the Sports Geek Closing Five, and I'm going to change this up, and you can answer this in either way. But do you remember the first sports or music event you ever attended? You get to choose.

Michael Farris (48:32.106)

Yeah, I think the first sports event I ever remember going to was a Louisville Redbirds AAA ball game. And my first music one, I'll throw it to you, that I absolutely will never forget was seeing sticks with my dad. I was a huge classic rock fan growing up. So, yeah.

Sean Callanan (48:41.036)

Okay. Yep.

Sean Callanan (48:53.588)

Awesome. Awesome. Do you have a favorite or a go to food at a sports or music event?

Michael Farris (49:02.004)

Okay, it's gonna sound like very basic, like, give me a hot dog that's been wrapped in foil sitting in the burner for like two to three hours. Like, that's it.

Sean Callanan (49:12.128)

It's it's it's coded. It's like you now know you're in an event and you're taking the experience whether it's a baseball game or a concert. Absolutely. What's the what's the first app you open in the morning?

Michael Farris (49:15.765)

Yeah.

Michael Farris (49:23.605)

turning off all of my alarms.

Sean Callanan (49:27.618)

That is the most literal answer I've had so far. Yes, like yes. Punching my phone and going back to sleep. The snooze button has never been answered, but I'll take that as a, take the.

Michael Farris (49:36.14)

Yeah, I mean, I don't know about you, but I have five set up because I know I'll snooze it to death and I need to go turn them all off.

Sean Callanan (49:44.566)

No, I do know people who do that. Is there someone that you follow might be someone on social media, it might be an author that the listeners should give a follow on why?

Michael Farris (49:53.965)

You know, I'll give a shout out to a grad school colleague of mine, Corey Bernstein. He heads up strategy for the USL and he's a great LinkedIn follow. He just shares so many incredible stories across the spectrum of sport and has such a good way of looking at it strategically. So I always love looking at his posts. He's one that I always check out.

Sean Callanan (50:14.158)

Now you can answer this last one both from a CMA point of view and from you personally. What social media platform is your MVP?

Michael Farris (50:26.124)

I'm a little bit of a gamer, so I guess I should say Discord, technically. But…

Sean Callanan (50:30.136)

Discord is a valid one for a gamer, as someone who used to own an esports team is a valid one.

Michael Farris (50:36.542)

Yeah, it's a, that's the one I used to talk with all my friends and buddies, but I would say Instagram is more of my traditional one that we go to. I think we talk about Instagram quite a bit here. I mean, obviously TikTok, but I'll admit I'm not as much on the TikTok as the young ones are nowadays.

Sean Callanan (50:43.683)

Yep.

Sean Callanan (50:51.938)

Well, the fact that you referred to it as the TikTok tells us that you aren't on the TikTok. And his Instagram is, I mean, his Instagram, the platform of choice for country music fans is that seem to be where they all gravitate and I guess.

Michael Farris (50:54.6)

I had to.

Michael Farris (51:02.411)

TikTok is technically, I think, volume-wise, but Facebook is still a very massive force in country music. But again, going back to the scale of segments within our fan base, you kind of have to keep a consistent force on Facebook.

Sean Callanan (51:09.784)

Mm-hmm.

Sean Callanan (51:17.23)

Mm.

Sean Callanan (51:22.158)

Absolutely. guess, you know, like most in the, you know, in the sports industry, I guess the music industry in the U S is looking over wondering if TikTok is going to be around in six months and most likely will be, but like we haven't had that. I mean, I guess the last time someone shut something down was vine. But like, you know, to have a whole marketing channel be removed could be quite catastrophic.

Michael Farris (51:46.988)

I mean, there would be a lot of impact from a music discovery standpoint. I TikTok is one of the massive ways that artists are being discovered now, let alone that fans are discovering said artists. So it would be interesting to see how that would shift if that tool wasn't

Sean Callanan (51:55.331)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sean Callanan (52:02.924)

I mean, we've come a long way from, you know, people discovering Justin Bieber from YouTube to now, like someone, you know, someone starts singing and putting their song on TikTok and it gets picked up and you know, it could be like two weeks, they go from nothing to having, you know, thousands and thousands of people clamoring for their music.

Michael Farris (52:07.19)

Yeah

Michael Farris (52:22.092)

Yeah, mean, spot on. I mean, it's almost one of the challenging things is like, what's popular today, we don't know what next week could bring. There could be one great video waiting to be discovered on the algorithm. And you go look at that artist and they've posted it 30 times or, hundreds of times and it finally hit. And then they got their moment. And it's a really interesting and challenging thing at the moment.

Sean Callanan (52:37.282)

Yep. Yep.

Sean Callanan (52:43.372)

That's obviously the challenge and opportunity of your job. You don't know there could be someone right now posting a TikTok that you don't have any data on and you've got to scramble to get that data and know that that's the hottest artist in the market. So it's an exciting part. Michael, really appreciate you coming on. I always ask listeners to reach out, say thank you for you taking the time. Is there a platform that is best for people to reach out and say thank you?

Michael Farris (52:54.668)

100 %

Michael Farris (53:08.876)

LinkedIn would be great and would welcome hearing from people and chatting. think one of the things we love is best practice sharing. So anybody who wants to chat, talk data, talk insights, talk ticketing, CMA would love to be involved.

Sean Callanan (53:22.312)

Absolutely. So yeah, please reach out to Michael, put links in the show notes. And if you do go to CMA Fest, send some photos, send us a tag, tell us how the event went. I'd love to hear it. Michael, thanks for coming on.

Michael Farris (53:34.432)

Yeah, thank you, Sean. was great to be on.