The Texan has shot to No 1 in the charts despite being ignored on country radio. It’s a sign that musicians can thrive outside the increasingly homogenised airwaves

“If you’re not on country radio, you don’t exist.” That’s what Sony Nashville CEO Gary Overton told the Tennessean this weekend ahead of the annual Country Radio Seminar. The label executive’s comment raised more than a few eyebrows across the country world – and for good reason. Anyone paying attention to the Billboard charts over the past few months knows that Overton’s assessment is at best myopic and at worst hopelessly out of touch.

Two weeks ago, modern outlaw Sturgill Simpson passed the 100,000 mark with his independently released Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, despite not being played on mainstream radio at all. Then last week, Atlanta country rockers Blackberry Smoke stunned the Nashville media circuit when their sixth album Holding All the Roses topped the Hot Country Albums Chart – once again, without any mainstream radio support.

This week, independent music made yet another huge splash as Aaron Watson’s aptly titled album The Underdog replaced Blackberry Smoke atop Billboard’s hot country albums chart. The set sold 26,000 copies in its first week, almost surpassing the 32,000 units that his previous record sold in its entire run. Granted, those numbers won’t have Jason Aldean or Florida Georgia Line shaking in their boots, but they’re nothing to shake a stick at either, and they’re substantially stronger than the numbers that many established major label players have recently achieved.

Watson, a Texas-bred country musician, has seen his star rise in recent years by sticking to his roots and crafting hearty, heartfelt country music that cottons to a traditional sound far more than the pop-influenced bro-country crowding the airwaves. But he’s never been a powerhouse seller until The Underdog, his 12th album, which saw a handful of its tracks reach the upper ranks of the iTunes country chart ahead of its release. When the album arrived, it instantly shot to the pole position. “My name is Aaron Watson. I’m not played on country radio. And I have the number one record in country music this week. I do exist,” Watson told Saving Country Music this week when he was asked about Overton’s statement. “I also run a multi-million dollar business that employs up to 20 people,” he added.

Watson’s success is clear evidence of the thriving Texas country music scene’s rising stock. In Texas, the contemporary red dirt stylings of musicians like Wade Bowen, Sunny Sweeney, and the Josh Abbott Band reach an enthusiastic audience, and they’re poised for prime time exposure if The Underdog’s sales are indicative of a larger trend. It’s more likely, though, that Watson is that rare kind of artist, like Macklemore, who builds up enough notoriety as an independent entity that the public is forced to take notice. In this regard, Watson’s rising star makes it clear that country artists are absolutely able to thrive without the support of mainstream radio.

Overton’s own artist, Garth Brooks, has had to confront this reality in the past year. Mainstream radio has firmly rejected both his comeback single People Loving People and its follow-up, Mom, but thanks to his own robust following, Brooks has had no trouble selling out arena shows across the country. The quartet Little Big Town is also relying on exposure outside of radio for their great single Girl Crush. Thanks to internet buzz and a high-profile performance on The Ellen Show, the single is holding strong at No 4 on the iTunes chart and yet it is still sitting at No 35 on the country airplay chart. Of course, there’s also the sad reality that radio has all but shut out women despite their continually robust sales without the radio support.

In Adam Gold’s excellent Rolling Stone piece Why Country Radio Still Matters, Skip Bishop, the former SVP of promotions at Sony Music Nashville, speaks enthusiastically about new technology services being primary tools for new music discovery and says that record labels should embrace them. “Several years ago, we didn’t have YouTube, we didn’t have the streaming sites, we didn’t have one big, powerful thing called SiriusXM,” he says. “To a really savvy record executive, you can go to the streaming services and to SiriusXM and you can find out if you have a hit record before you go out and test your relationships at terrestrial radio.”

This line of thinking makes perfect sense, but it has yet to take root at country radio, where homogeneity reigns supreme. If major labels and radio corporations really wanted to pay attention to the clues provided by consumers, then Aaron Watson and Kacey Musgraves would be enjoying major rotation on the airwaves, and songs like Girl Crush would be playing during peoples’ morning commute.

As it stands, though, the powers that be like all the bland sameness. It allows them to pump out generic music by generic male stars with all the efficiency of a McDonalds assembly line. The fast food chain is a perfect metaphor for modern country radio, actually. If you eat enough McDonalds, it will soon become the only thing you want to eat. The same thing happens when listening to only one sort of music – you start to want similar sounds and wince at variety. That is precisely why it’s imperative that country radio starts looking to the fringes, to the people not already on radio, to the ones that theoretically “don’t exist.” Because if the format doesn’t, then country radio will become so one-note that it will collapse upon itself and go the way of rock radio, ceasing to exist altogether.