Damon Whiteside is resigning as CEO of the Academy of Country Music after leading the organization for more than six years.
Whiteside will remain CEO through June 30, six weeks after the 61st ACM Awards are held May 17 in Las Vegas. He will then transition to CEO emeritus for the rest of 2026 as the ACM’s board of directors searches for his successor.
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“I’ve really accomplished what I wanted to accomplish here, and I am ready to do something else. I’m ready to spread my wings,” Whiteside tells Billboard in an exclusive interview. “I’ve worked in entertainment in L.A. and Nashville now, and I love to learn and grow and face new challenges. After reflecting, I felt like it’s the right time for me to step away and to focus on myself and my next steps in my career.”
Whiteside presided over a time of change at the ACM, including ushering the organization through COVID and relocating its headquarters from Encino, California, to Nashville in 2022. The ACM was founded in 1964 in Los Angeles to represent country music in the western states, counterbalancing the Nashville-based Country Music Association, which had launched six years earlier.
“The board and [I] really felt like where the industry is right now is much different, obviously, than it was in the ‘60s and all the reasons we were on the West Coast don’t really exist anymore,” he says. “In an effort to be more present in Nashville and be more of a resource to our membership, it just made sense to be in the center of it.” He also created and/or expanded several ACM franchises, including the ACM Honors, ACM Party for a Cause, and the annual Charley Pride Inclusion Brunch.
Under his guidance, the ACM Awards left its longtime home of CBS for Amazon’s Prime Video in 2022, making it the first major awards show to move exclusively to a streaming platform, greatly increasing its global audience.
When he first approached Prime Video, “There weren’t any streamers doing live programming. Even sports really hadn’t started yet,” he recalls. “When we went to [Amazon] to pitch it, I have to say I was excited, but I thought, ‘Yeah, we probably have a snowball’s chance to actually get this sold.’ But ultimately, we just happened to meet at the right time, and they were looking to get into live and for something to differentiate their platform and we were just the perfect thing.”
Last year’s ACM Awards celebrating its 60th anniversary increased viewership 70% over the previous year, according to the ACM, and reached viewers in more than 235 territories worldwide.
In 2025, Whiteside negotiated a new three-year deal that will have Prime Video airing the awards through 2028, with an option for 2029. The awards also return to their longtime home of Las Vegas following the past three years at the Ford Center at The Star in Frisco, Texas.
The Prime Video extension “gives us a really good runway as an organization to be able to plan. And then [returning] the show to Vegas, I really wanted to stay for that and get it re-established,” Whiteside says. (The ACM Awards are produced by Dick Clark Productions, which shares a parent company, PMC, with Billboard.)
The ACM’s philanthropic arm, Lifting Lives, turns 20 this year and has also been a source of pride for Whiteside, including raising and distributing more than $4 million through its COVID Response Fund.
Overall, “I’ve been very fortunate in working on a great transition plan with the board that leaves the organization stable,” Whiteside says. According to the ACM, 2025 profits increased 150% over the previous year, and 2026 profits are projected to grow another 140%.
Whiteside says he also feels confident that the current leadership team will continue to steer the 5,000-member organization in the right direction. Over his tenure, he says there has been a 100% staff turnover. Additionally, the organization laid off roughly one-quarter of its staff in June 2025, leaving it with around 20 employees. Among the key staffers are Taylor Wolf (executive director, ACM Lifting Lives), Christina Bartko (vp, accounting and finance), Ben Carter (vp, live events & production), Lauren Burchett (head of strategic partnerships & revenue), Haley Montgomery (head of artist relations & awards) and Steve Mekler (head of creative & marketing).
His departure leaves both the ACM and the Country Music Association, country music’s two top trade and advocacy groups, looking for new leaders. In January, CMA CEO Sarah Trahern announced that she will retire at the end of 2026, after helming the CMA since 2014.
Whiteside joined the ACM from the CMA, where he had been chief marketing officer under Trahern. Prior to the CMA, he spent more than 15 years at the Walt Disney Company.
Their moves are coincidental, Whiteside says, but he and Trahern shared a laugh over the timing. “Earlier this year, she and I confessed to each other that we were both planning our retirement from trade organizations. I was like, ‘You got to be kidding me because I’m planning to do the same,’” he says.
After taking some time off, Whiteside says he would like to find more time for philanthropy, adding he currently serves on the board of the Pet Community Center, for which he and his husband will produce an April 6 benefit show at City Winery in Nashville. “I’m hoping whatever I do, I’m going to figure out a balance of music, entertainment, television and animal rescue,” he says. “I’ve always kind of branded myself as Hollywood meets Nashville, and that’s what I want to continue, and then the philanthropy will probably be more like a side hustle.”
For his successor, Whiteside’s best advice is “take a year at least to just take it all in, absorb, learn, understand the history of the organization and really understand how can this organization support country music for the next 60 years. I would recommend they come in and mentor the amazing leadership team we have and continue to engage and lean on the 73-person board of directors. These are people that have storied careers in the industry and all different backgrounds, and it’s important that we engage them in our challenges and opportunities.”
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