“Don’t play on the Internet!” Heather McBee—now Vice President, Digital Business, Sony Music Nashville—recalls hearing friends talk of being given such workplace directives years ago. Computers and Internet access were becoming part of almost any job…and without Web access at home, virtually everyone was tempted to explore beyond their assigned tasks. McBee recalls thinking, “But it’s the future!”…and, whether at home or work, “I kept playing.”

   That “future” that McBee had the vision to see is now the fastest-growing marketing avenue available to the recording industry…and in her role at Sony Music Nashville, McBee is at the forefront. She is responsible for a staff that manages online sales, mobile business, digital downloads, media outreach, consumer marketing and any other activity that utilizes digital technology as a portal for direct consumer sales and to generate awareness of Sony Music Nashville’s artists and their music.

   Her responsibilities, role in the company and position as leader of this activity in the Nashville music community are a far cry from the West Virginia native’s early forays into music—an early radio stint in her home state…a move to Nashville for Belmont University’s prestigious music business program…and an internship with BNA Records that, upon graduation, parlayed itself into positions at the label as a receptionist and department assistant. Through BNA’s eventual pairing with RCA Nashville and their subsequent mergers with Arista Nashville (as the RCA Label Group - Nashville) and, more recently, with Sony’s Nashville-based operation, McBee’s career has followed a path that has taken her through such areas of the company as Product Development, Sales and Strategic Business Development. The Internet’s rapidly growing impact—and her unmatched interest and curiosity in the medium—placed her at the forefront of the company’s initial “New Media” efforts, a division of activity that has evolved into the freestanding area that McBee now oversees.

   “I had the fortitude to stick it out when everybody was saying, ‘No,’” McBee recalls. She gives credit to label group chairman Joe Galante for allowing her to prove the viability of her ideas, thus carving her path to the present—“He asks that things be quantified. He gave me freedom to experiment…as long as I tempered my excitement and made it fit our goals and what we were doing.”

   That experimentation is ongoing as a result of always-changing technology and its availability. “I enjoy the challenge of educating people,” McBee says. “Providers often don’t believe country is a viable format—it’s a constant battle.” At the front of Nashville’s efforts to crack the digital marketplace since the doors first opened, McBee sees it as a responsibility to wage that battle. “The space is all hip-hop and mainstream pop—if only because they see the sales volume those genres currently have,” she explains. “Our consumer is mainstream—he or she just isn’t fully embracing technology and the Internet to the extent that other consumer groups are.”

   The consumer isn’t McBee’s only focus. “Artists know that what they do now greatly impacts their future—it’s important to invest in them and nuture them,” she says. “I feel the same way about myself.” It’s that belief—in herself and in the unseen opportunities that the digital world, mobile technology and the Internet hold—that keeps McBee a step ahead of the rest. “It’s just part of me—I like having something to prove.”