New Artist Showcase: Kane Brown [Interview]

Kane Brown is a 22-year-old country music newcomer from Georgia that has generated a huge fan base thanks to social media. His YouTube channel has over 60,000 subscribers and his Facebook page has over 130,000 fans. His songs have been topping the iTunes chart, even surpassing some of country music's biggest stars. 

Brown first started getting noticed on YouTube, and has been described as country music's Justin Bieber. "I've been doing it two years now. I remember I got 60,000 shares whenever I covered Lee Brice's 'I Don't Dance'," said Brown. "Back then I would average 5,000 LIKES on all my stuff, and I thought I was doing good then, because that's a lot more than what the average person gets. Recently, these last couple months, I put up a video and it automatically gets over a million views in a couple days."

Kane Brown says that his style of music incorporates elements from many different genres. "I grew up on a farm in Lafayette, Georgia, listening to a lot of Tim McGraw, just all kinds of stuff. I wanted to sing country music, but these days it's not the old school anymore, it's all different genres mixed in together. I just took that and ran with it."

Brown has recently been booked to open for Parmalee, and is also talking to additional country music stars about opening for them. Brown said that he's been surprised at how many of country's well-known artists are familiar with his music. During the CMA Awards, Luke Bryan came up to Brown, shook his hand and said, "Man, you've got to stop passing me on the iTunes charts."