Billy Ray Cyrus and Miley Cyrus present "Song of the Year" at "The 42nd Annual CMA Awards," on Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2008, live from the Sommet Center in Nashville on the ABC Television Network. Photographer: Donn Jones / Provided by Country Music Association.
June 10, 2009 — The music industry goes to huge lengths to quantify results through singles charts, albums charts, ticket-sales tallies and awards records. A new social network system charts Twitter followers for the genre’s stars, and Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift are firmly at Nos. 1 and 2 with at least seven times as many followers as the artist at No. 3, Billy Ray Cyrus.
A cooperative arrangement between Music Row magazine and AristoWorks, the Twitter chart notes the number of followers for each artist with direct links to their Twitter pages, which often call attention to other media, but might also include notes about where they ate, who’s visiting them or how their latest performance went: John Rich recently tweeted about singing "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" during the seventh-inning stretch at a St. Louis Cardinals game.
With nearly 790,000 followers, Miley is clearly at the head of the pack, with Taylor claiming 570,000 followers. Billy Ray boasts 78,000, and Keith Urban is the only other country act with as many as 25,000 followers.
The Top 10 from the Twitter chart, in beta form at www.musicrow.com/charts/top-ranking-country-artists/, is:
• Miley Cyrus, 789,759 followers
• Taylor Swift, 570,106 followers
• Billy Ray Cyrus, 78,036 followers
• Keith Urban, 25,507 followers
• Kellie Pickler, 24,082 followers
• LeAnn Rimes, 23,420 followers
• Julianne Hough, 15,663 followers
• Rascal Flatts, 15,528 followers
• Martina McBride, 15,502 followers
• Willie Nelson, 13,759 followers