By David Farrell
Twelve years in and Mike Denney describes the remarkable success of MDM Recordings (so far) as “a lot of massive highs and a lot of massive lows,” pauses, then adds “but in all its been a great ride!”
In an email exchange, he expands on how covid has affected the company’s operations. “We have actually been really busy! We just keep our heads down and do our thing!! Obviously dealing with losing all the festival and regular tour gigs for the year and possibly longer, we have had to regroup, refocus and reposition ourselves at radio.”
To what end? “We have had back to Back Number 1’s this year with Jess Moskaluke and Tyler Joe Miller, and our radio market share is back after a couple of pretty wonky years where we had artist roster departures. It took two years to rebuild, resign and rebrand ourselves, and it's working. We currently have three songs in the Top 50 at country radio, Jess Moskaluke’s Halfway Home, Tyler Joe Miller’s I Would Be Over Me Too, and David James’ If I Were You.”
None too shabby, for sure.
MDM also has Tyler Joe Miller and Don Amero in the Sirius XM Top of the Country Contest and broken through with Halfway Home becoming a Top 5 hit for Moskaluke in Australia. Miller and James have also had debuts in the Top 50 in that country. Now logging over 32 million views on YouTube and over 40 million combined streams of her songs, Moskaluke is up for her 7th consecutive Female Artist of the Year nomination for this year’s CCMA Awards and Tyler Joe Miller’s success has placed him in the Rising Star sweepstakes at the annual.
If all this weren’t enough, philanthropic hat singer Bobby Wills is earning positive reaction to his latest MDM single Wash My Truck and Black Mountain Whiskey Rebellion has amassed over 6 million streams alone on Spotify without ever releasing a song to radio.
Denney has taken time during the lockdown to update the company’s logo (as depicted above). He’s also an equal partner in Acronym Records, run by Tony Tarleton. Launched in 2017, the non-country imprint with global digital distribution, has releases by Kaia Kater, Del Barber, and Megan Nash, and has just issued the debut single by newcomer Mikhail Laxton.
“Its been a crazy year for sure, but our Canadian sales revenue is up 45% YTY and MDM’s full roster will have new singles out this fall, along with EP releases for Don Amero and Tyler Joe Miller and a vinyl release from Jess.”
