Nashville Lost 84% of Songwriters from 2000-2017

Said singer-songwriter, Garth Brooks, at the 2017 SXSW music conference:

“Songwriting’s going downhill, and we as artists need to try and preserve that [art],” he exhorted backstage at the Austin Convention Center before his keynote address at the music festival and conference.

“Everybody’s making something, but nobody’s making enough to survive.” Brooks said that from "2000 until now, Nashville — and I’m talking just about Nashville—has lost over 84% of its songwriters." “It’s a ghost town when it comes to songwriters. One or two songwriters have 28 Number Ones. That’s never happened before. So as much as I’d love for my name to be one of those writers that has the 28 Number Ones, even if you ask the writers themselves, they’ll tell you that (if) one person gets that many Number Ones, the music might start sounding kind of the same." “So my thing is, for music’s sake — which is for all of our sakes — we must reinvest in the songwriter and let’s take care of them because that’s where it all starts. Keeping these people in business until they write that song that God sent them down here to write — I think that’s our duty.” “I wish I had a crystal ball and could tell you everything’s gonna be fine, but I hate to admit this: I don’t know."