Inside the ‘timing and preparation’ that guided Megan Moroney’s 2024 country success

Conversations about the dip in radio listenership of female artists and the breakthrough potential of women creators in the genre aren’t heard here. A unique professional solidarity is assumed in the room, governed by how already vaunted and well-respected the team individually has become.

As of 2024, Moroney joins her team with similar renown. The seamless synergy that’s apparent without being acknowledged is powerfully palpable.

Acts like Moroney, 2023 Entertainer of the Year Lainey Wilson, and breakout stars like Ella Langley are female performers achieving consistent success with songs that, like Griffith metaphorically highlights, are “solid pieces of furniture in solid homes built in communities of solid homes that will last for years” as a sustainable, female-led Music City ecosystem.

A unique spin on on-the-road artist development

Griffith’s experience leads her, at various points, to mention Moroney arriving in Nashville as an intern for Griffith’s fellow management client, Sugarland’s Kristian Bush, as key to her already having a studied awareness of the many nuances of artist development required to achieve music industry success.

In recent decades, many economic and social concerns have hindered the ability of major labels to groom artists for success. Via her insistence — with the aid of a team behind her — Moroney, who signed to Sony Music Nashville/Columbia Records in November 2022, has engaged in impromptu work with what Vazzana refers to as “iconic performers of great stature” to evolve in and learn about her artistry.

In 2023, Moroney toured in support of Country Music Hall of Famers Brooks and Dunn in arenas while working in the studio with artists who included Jamey Johnson. This year, she spent the summer on tour in stadiums with Kenny Chesney while also playing much smaller theaters on days off from Chesney’s tour to hone her craft.

Digging deeper into her strategies highlights that they all feature dynamic impacts achieved via multifaceted attacks.

“Megan’s also grown the demand for her hard ticket sales over that time, too,” Griffith, says.

She notes that the appeal for Moroney at events where the artist is paid either in part or in total from ticket sales revenue (“hard ticket”) is growing commensurate to her appeal at festivals, corporate or special events and college campus events (“soft ticket”) where she’s paid a guaranteed flat fee regardless of ticket sales.

Growth for Moroney’s live headlining shows has been carefully incremental. In the past 18 months, that has meant expanding from 250-person rooms to playing 2,500-capacity spaces by the close of 2024.

“Megan’s fans deserve to grow with her and the show and Megan herself deserves the ability to tour (as a headliner) as long as she wants,” Griffith says.

Niche, personal and sustainable development

A rabidly supportive fanbase is also key to Moroney’s growth. Her team has found a way to protect those fans and their hearts and wallets while inviting them into her creative universe.

Tickets for Moroney’s 2022 events were maxed out at $15 for 250-capacity rooms. In 2025, she will perform for two nights at Nashville’s new, 5,000-person Pinnacle venue. Tickets for her 2025 Nashville dates currently start at $115.

Megan Moroney: ‘There’s nothing I love more than a man singing ‘I’m Not Pretty”

Megan Moroney talks with Tennessean country music reporter Marcus K. Dowling ahead of her Nissan Stadium performance at CMA Fest Sunday, June 9, 2024

It has been challenging to deliver value for young children, mothers with children, college girls, and more when, where and how they want to receive it.

However, along the way, Moroney — who studied digital marketing, influencer marketing and the music industry while at the University of Georgia — still pilots and monitors her social media to ensure a direct artist-to-market read on whether her art and brand, as it advances, is still highly connective with all markets comprising her fanbase.

“Ensuring that Megan’s fans continue to grow with her over time requires that no steps are skipped where her fans, or now, super fans,” don’t feel like they have some way to connect to her directly, Vazzana says.

“Maintaining a natural-feeling progression where the supply is just under the demand is important,” she says.

In 2024, the country industry sees multibillion-dollar brands, including Anheuser Busch InBev, Molson Coors, and Wrangler, often tapped as artist sponsors.

Regarding Moroney, niche boutique brands like Charlotte Tillsbury’s makeup, which she “eats, sleeps, breathes, and believes in,” are often pushed to the forefront. This strategy allows for partnerships with Daniel X Diamond for rhinestone-encrusted guitars, stage sets, and stage wear. Six months ago, this strategy saw her work with the Philadelphia-based affordable boutique clothing line Boys Lie to release a limited-edition run of athleisure and jewelry centered on her “Am I Okay?” track “Man on the Moon.”

“Megan knew what she wanted and it wasn’t driven by being a typical influencer attached to a brand (or traditional to country’s stereotypes),” Wright says. “Because of that, we pass on 90% of what we’re presented because we know — given the brand Megan is building with our help — that they won’t effectively create the magic that saturates (the culture we’re developing).”

A singer-songwriter developing a standout musical catalog

Is Megan Moroney OK after winning New Artist of the Year at the 2024 CMA Awards?

Megan Moroney wins New Artist of the Year at the 2024 CMA Awards, Wednesday Nov. 20, 2024

Moroney’s careful engagement has achieved an 85% success rate in attaining Top 20 song releases on country radio in a market that currently plays nine men to one woman in the format. That’s impressive given that, comparatively, Luke Combs achieved a No. 1 hit the first 13 times he went to radio.

Moroney has shined even brighter on streaming services and in the live realm. By the end of 2025, she’ll likely eclipse 10 million monthly listeners on Spotify. That’s one-seventh of Post Malone’s listenership, but the recent country crossover star has had almost a decadelong head start.

Ask Moroney’s most devoted fans and they’ll say one in three of the roughly 40 songs she’s released between two albums and two EPs in four years is a sing-along-worthy anthem. That’s as much a credit to working with hall of fame-caliber songwriters such as Jessi Alexander, Jessie Jo Dillon, Luke Laird, Shane McAnally, Lori McKenna and Liz Rose as it is to what is described as her “innate ability to know what the people on the other side of the phone want to hear,” Griffith says.

“She’s typically writing only about the things she’s going through that her fanbase is, too, so she knows exactly what she wants to say,” Griffith says. “I’ve worked with songwriters for 30 years, and she’s one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever encountered in putting her feelings into words.”

Moroney’s skill set arrives as country music’s streaming growth has been exponential. Spotify recently reported a 20% global increase in monthly streams for the genre in 2024 compared to the previous year.

“It’s not just ‘Tennessee Orange’ followed by ‘Lucky.’ Two years before that, Megan wrote daily, often by herself in her apartment, during the COVID-19 quarantine to improve her skills,” adds co-manager Corbett about material that yielded Moroney’s six-song 2021 EP “Pistol Made of Roses.”

Griffith is moved to tears while offering a poignant story regarding the power of the work consistently put into Moroney, which has developed a standout catalog.

“You have to see when Megan plays ‘Girl in the Mirror’ live and you learn that mothers and fathers in attendance are using that song to teach their children about having a positive self-image,” Griffith says.

In the 2023 ballad, Moroney sings: “Why it didn’t work, well, it’s perfectly clear / I loved the boy more than I love the girl in the mirror / You can’t love the boy more than you love the girl in the mirror.”

“Parents are learning to have better relationships with their daughters because they can discuss those lyrics together,” Griffith says.

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Idiosyncratic artistry leads to superstardom

Moroney’s unique ability to live in and react to a world defined by her handiwork also sets a standard for the type of artist her team is working with.

In 2024, Moroney played amphitheater gigs immediately following stadium gigs, allowing her to take time during plane flights and pre-show rehearsals to quickly adjust to the notes she took while watching Chesney’s sets.

She also attempts to feel her performances’ energy directly and always amplifies those moments when intimately engaging new and old fans would be most beneficial.

Beyond being empathetic, she’s synesthetic, too. Music overstimulates her senses, and she sees colors when she hears sounds.

“There are songs that made the album ‘Am I Okay?’ after ‘Lucky’ was released because they felt more blue than green, and we respected that,” says Griffith as her face breaks into a knowing smile.

Adds Vazzana: “Giving a song that uniquely appeals to the writer and personally appeals to a fan a live element of engagement that makes a young female fan want a hug or someone wants their ‘Emo Cowgirl’ hat signed makes stars into superstars.”

‘Luck is when timing and preparation meet’

All of Moroney’s team members seated at UTA agree that because Moroney has soaked as much knowledge as she has and applied the lessons that she’s learned so quickly, a culture now surrounds her art that makes it broadly appealing in a familiar, comfortable way.

Ask Wright to summarize what has allowed Moroney’s growth to occur and she offers succinct reasoning: “Intentional songwriting of timeless songs layered over strategic and uniquely fresh fan engagement.”

Vazzana chimes in with a broader doubling-down.

“Luck is when timing and preparation meet,” she says. “Megan honed her craft at the perfect storm of a time when country music, as a genre and industry, desperately needed someone like her.”