Former Universal Music Group Nashville chair/CEO Cindy Mabe has launched Joan of Arc (JOA) Music, a deeply ambitious full-service company that includes artist development, label services, publishing and management.
“Country music is at a crossroads,” said Mabe in a press release. “We risk losing the very essence of what makes country music special — its authentic storytelling, its connection to people’s real lives, and its deep cultural roots. Joan of Arc Music exists to be warriors for creators and protect artistry.”
JOA Music, which is expected to announce signings soon, has a distribution partnership with Warner Music Nashville (WMN).
“This partnership with [WMN chair/president] Cris Lacy and the team at Warner Records Nashville amplifies our mission,” added Mabe. “Cris is a Nashville veteran whose commitment to the legacy of country music aligns with our vision of preserving the genre’s authentic storytelling while embracing innovative distribution and marketing strategies. Together, we’re creating a powerful platform for both emerging and established artists to reach global audiences.”
The company has three divisions in addition to Joan of Arc Entertainment, which will house the abovementioned label, management and publishing companies. Joan of Arc Studio Works will focus on content creation, including TV/film production, audio content and short-form monetization; Joan of Arc Ventures will highlight strategic investments in partnerships and equity-backed ventures; and Joan of Arc Music Preservation Foundation is the philanthropic arm that will protect country music’s stories past, while developing its future.
Mabe, who was Billboard’s 2019 Country Power Players executive of the year, will serve as founder/CEO of the new entity and has hired staff that includes a number of executives she worked with at UMG Nashville (now MCA), including Lori Christian (head of label services and management), Dawn Gates (head of business development & ventures) and Leigh Morrison (head of office administration & artist relations), as well as singer/songwriter Harper Grae (head of tv/film & project scouting) and Allison Winkler (head of JOA music preservation).
In addition to Warner Music Nashville, JOA Music has secured partnerships with the CMA Foundation, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum and mental health and wellness service organization Porter’s Call.
Mabe, who was the first woman to lead a Nashville major label group, exited UMG Nashville in February 2025 after almost two years at the helm. Among the artists she has worked with are Chris Stapleton, Eric Church, Keith Urban, Luke Bryan, George Strait, Carrie Underwood, The War and Treaty, Mickey Guyton and Little Big Town.
The press release about the company’s launch was accompanied by two deeply personal and ambitious treatises from Mabe that serve as mission statements — one titled “The Origin Story” and the other titled “The Difference.” In the latter, she indicts the haste of Los Angeles and New York labels to move into Nashville as country music has exploded. “With the rush for coastal legitimizing, the labels suggesting they know better, it often feels like the coal mines of Appalachia being strip mined of coal all over again,” Mabe wrote. “What we do — the people who create and deliver it — has real value. Our greatest resources are our music and our history, and that will enrich our future.”
Mabe also takes on technology, which she says threatens to overtake artistry if not used properly. “Technology that is not creative led will take the God, the actual life and emotion, out of our music. Without teaching the next generations the craft and how to build artist careers, to develop something rooted in honest life experience, the creatives who bring the legends of tomorrow through the channels of a business that doesn’t value where the songs and music come from won’t know where to begin.”
She adds, “My heart hurts for how little so many coming to the industry care about the sheer magic in music, let alone its power and purpose; that ability to change, comfort and inspire people.”
In “The Origin Story,” Mabe again takes to task the coastal labels’ encroachment on Nashville and pop’s often ephemeral nature that can lead record companies to abandon acts as soon as the music’s popularity drops off, instead of supporting artists long term.
“Pop labels chase what’s popular, then move on when it cools. For country music, which has existed beyond that premise, it means when the current boom cools, country will be a dead language,” she writes. “That’s when the lives of Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, Patsy Cline and Charley Pride get reduced to an oversimplified meme that loses the heart of why they hit people where they live. Nashville’s been reduced to a string of celebrity-named bars on Lower Broadway that have little connection to the music, just lip service to what they think they know.”
Mabe adds that she had an epiphany shortly before she left UMG Nashville. “Days after I turned 52, realizing how little any of the incoming dealmakers understood about the history or cared about the music, I left my job as the head of Universal Music Group Nashville. The music meant too much to me to participate in separating the music from its roots, its generational fans and the lives it’s always reflected.”
Immediately thereafter, while attending her uncle’s funeral and hearing a different song by Alan Jackson played after each speaker, Mabe says, “I wept, not just for the loss of an uncle I’d grown up with, but for the demise of country music… Sitting there, I realized: country music is worth fighting for.”
Funding for the venture was not disclosed beyond Mabe writing that JOA is “funded by the stakeholders of Nashville, country music and those who believe in preserving its cultural and human legacy.”
In closing, Mabe cites the famous heroine from the 15th century who defended the French nation but was later burned at the stake. “We mean to be disruptors, protectors and groundbreakers. We are destined to slay dragons, rise again, fight for what we believe — and like Joan, a young woman from a small village in northeast France, never be forgotten.”
