Columbia Nashville has signed a strategic partnership agreement with Chase Rice, Thirty Tigers and RED Distribution. Columbia Nashville will immediately start promoting Rice’s Top 40-and-climbing single “Ready Set Roll” at country radio.
Released independently through his own label, Dack Janiels, LLC, 28-year-old Chase Rice’s Ready Set Roll EP produced by Chris DeStefano and Scott Cooke has sold 68,983 copies to date. Shortly after the EP was released digitally in the fall of 2013, Rice and management company, Triple 8 Management, hired independent promotion staff RPM, to help charge his single “Ready Set Roll” up the charts, and in doing so they attracted major label interest.
Gary Overton, Chairman & CEO, Sony Music Nashville shares, “We are extremely excited about our new relationship with Chase and having him on our Columbia Nashville roster. He and his team have created a tremendous buzz about him, his music and his live shows and we are ready to help them break it wide open across the country.”
“It started out with me pounding the pavement and playing anywhere I could that involved reaching the fans,” shares Rice. “It’s grown into this really incredible entity where the #CRew spreads the word about our music and our shows for us. We’ve played based on where they demanded us—so when we were approached to take it to the next level, we knew we had to take advantage of the opportunity for them.”
Sirius XM The Highway’s John Marks initially championed Rice with his release “How She Rolls” in 2012 from the independently released Dirt Road Communion. Next came DeStefano and Triple 8, who helped showcase Rice’s songwriting skills that contributed to the 6 million-and-counting selling single “Cruise” by Florida Georgia Line. Noting what satellite radio and, hence, terrestrial radio, can do for a country act, Rice and team set out to find an equally passionate major label partner; Columbia Nashville was poised for the job.
“This partnership really strengthens the backbone of Chase’s organization,” shares Rice’s manager, Bruce Kalmick, Triple 8 Management. “We hope to leverage their promotional team’s passion to catapult his story on a grander scale both regarding sales and radio success.”
“Ready Set Roll” debuted at No. 1 on iTunes sales chart and has already sold over 260,000 copies with a full album expected for release in summer 2014.
For more information, please visit www.chaserice.com or follow Rice on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at @chasericemusic.
