TEEN COUNTRY PHENOM BATSON INKS WITH WCM; RECORD DEAL NEXT?

Word coming out of Nashville is that Prosper Entertainment’s buzzing indie artist Maddox Batson has inked a pub deal with Warner Chappell. The Alabama-bred 14-year-old ginned up some big TikTok action a while back with “Tears in the River;” the trending vid for his newest cut, “I Wanna Know,” appears below.

Those in the know say the fingerprints of both WCM President of U.S. A&R Ryan Press and the pubco’s Nashville boss, Ben Vaughn, are all over this inking, which comes in the wake of news that the singer had signed with WME for full representation; Braeden Rountree (Kane Brown, Tucker Wetmore) will act as agent for music. The scuttlebutt in the wake of CMA Fest is that a record deal is on the horizon. Will it be with a Nashville-based label? A coastal company? A hybrid? Stay tuned.