Well-known Nashville record producer and Middle Tennessee State University alumni Michael Knox paid a visit to the John Bragg Mass Communications building on Nov. 11 to share his experiences and advice to current recording management students.
Knox was impressed with the many changes that have taken place in the Mass Communications department since he graduated in 1991.
“Students have more options now and lots of choices to pick a major,” Knox said. “By the time you graduate you know what you want to do.”
Knox is best known for discovering and working with country music superstar Jason Aldean. He has also worked with Montgomery Gentry, Trace Adkins and many others.
Knox began his career in Nashville by opening the first song-plugging company, Hit Pluggers, in 1991. He has been breaking the rules and blazing new trails ever since. As a plugger he pitched new songs and material to various artists, accumulating more than 300 cuts in eight years.
Knox said when he’s searching for new material he tries to find a song he wants to listen to over and over. He then throws it aside and goes back to it later. “I’m still a fan and a listen like a fan,” Knox said.
Speaking for 90 minutes to a room of about 150 students, Knox said when he’s looking at a new artist, he’s looking for someone who is unique, who has a little character—not a clown, but different.
“They’ve got to have that little ‘something’ that irritates you so much that you have to keep listening to figure out what it is,” Knox said.
Knox expressed concern about the future of the music industry if it doesn’t catch up with technology. He said each time someone downloads a song off Spotify, he gets paid $1.26. If someone just streams it he gets a penny. That money has to be divided between the writer, the artist and the producer. “You can’t tell me that’s fair.”
“I think we need to be paid more than $5 a month for unlimited play,” Knox said. “If we don’t get back to selling records we’re screwed.”
“I’m not a songwriter,” Knox said. “That’s not what I do. But I am a songwriter’s best friend.”
In 2011, Knox won Producer for Album of the Year from the Country Music Association for Aldean’s My Kind of Party. The following year he took home awards for Single Record of the Year and Vocal Event of the Year at the Academy of Country Music Awards for “Don’t You Wanna Stay,” a duet with Aldean and Kelly Clarkson. He also has multiple Grammy nominations.
In August, Knox took over the helm of famed legacy publishing company Peer Music, in addition to running his own production management company, Music Knox.
