COUNTRY MUSIC SINGING THE BLUES; WITH REVENUES DOWN, CUTBACKS LOOM AT NASHVILLE RECORD COMPANIES.

Byline: Jim Patterson Associated Press 

Merle Haggard may have summed up the current state of country music with a line from a 1982 hit: ``Are the good times really over for good?''

Layoffs have hit the country music industry.

After reaching record heights in 1995, country album sales have sagged. Sales were up a feeble 2.7 percent in 1998, and the gain was due largely to one artist: Garth Brooks, who accounted for 10 percent of the nearly 73 million albums sold, according to SoundScan, which tracks sales.

At the same time, the industry has been unable to launch new acts able to generate the kind of pop-star revenue that Brooks and Shania Twain produce.

As a result, Arista Nashville, a division of RCA, fired six executives last week. Song publisher Sony/ATV Tree dropped about half of its Nashville roster of 100 songwriters in October, citing declining royalties.

Mercury and MCA Records, owned by Seagram Co., have laid off seven country-division employees between them. And the publishing divisions of PolyGram and MCA will soon merge, costing jobs, primarily in country music.

Some worry that a repeat of the mid-1980s may be in store. That's when the bottom fell out of the country music boom started by the 1980 movie ``Urban Cowboy.''

``The consumer is changing,'' said Joe Galante, who runs the Nashville office for RCA Records. ``And I'm not sure everybody's got their finger on the pulse. Clearly there is a problem in terms of what we are doing as an industry.''

Nashville may be a victim of its own phenomenal success. Revenue from the sale of country music albums quadrupled between 1989 and 1995 to about $2 billion, when Brooks became one of the most recognizable celebrities in America.

As the money rolled in, companies like Warner Bros. and MCA built expensive office buildings, gave employees raises and hired more people. Now those companies are looking to cut costs.

Small record companies Rising Tide, Magnatone, Almo Sounds, Imprint and Decca have all closed their doors in the past couple of years.

``It was a total surprise to me, to everybody,'' said Kim Fowler, a publicist who had barely started a job at Rising Tide a year ago when the company folded. ``People are getting squeezed out, and they have nowhere to go in the music business.''

Promising singers like Shane Stockton, Chris Knight and Matraca Berg have lost their record deals. Dolly Parton did, too, when Decca closed last month, although she won't have trouble getting another deal.

``Whenever you mix art and commerce, you put yourself in danger of the current craze or trends or style,'' said Jimmie Fadden of The Dirt Band, country music veterans who were about to release an album on Rising Tide when the label closed. They have since signed with DreamWorks SKG.

Galante estimated that 10 percent of record company staffers may be cut in the long run, and as many as 20 percent of songwriters will lose the stipends from publishing companies that allow them to write full time.

``I think that we're not done with consolidation,'' he said. ``We have been carrying, probably, just a little too much in the way of manpower.''

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PHOTO (Color) no caption (Cowboy hat, guitar and boots)

Tina Gerson/Daily News