Technology Emerges as Salvation of Christian Music Industry

c. 2006 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Not long ago, illegal downloads flattened CD sales and sent the music industry into a panic. But that seems forgotten now, or nearly so, as Christian labels and artists and their mainstream counterparts are looking to technology to revolutionize how they reach listeners. Technology, once decried as the music […]

c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Not long ago, illegal downloads flattened CD sales and sent the music industry into a panic. But that seems forgotten now, or nearly so, as Christian labels and artists and their mainstream counterparts are looking to technology to revolutionize how they reach listeners.

Technology, once decried as the music business’s executioner, is now seen by many as its salvation.


This wave of “new media” technology, including Apple’s iTunes Music Store and the Web site MySpace, enables artists to find fans and connect with them immediately. It’s also creating opportunities for Christian record companies _ particularly battered by the downturn in the music industry _ to target consumers.

And for Christians artists who make music for the masses and want to find a broader audience, the technological revolution is freeing their music from what some call the Christian music ghetto.

As Christian artists employ new media like iTunes and MySpace, they’re finding fans and connecting with them in immediate and lasting ways.

Singer-songwriter Derek Webb, formerly with the band Caedmon’s Call, has been a hit on iTunes. He said the new technology is “the shot in the arm that the flailing music industry needs right now.”

“The industry is being crushed under the weight of the `old law’ _ the old way of making and distributing music,” he said. “But we know from sales of iPods and downloads that there are more people paying attention to music now than ever before. They’re just not buying records in traditional ways.”

Using iTunes, listeners can download individual songs for just 99 cents or buy entire albums without ever entering a music store. Those songs can then be transferred to the wildly popular iPods or burned onto a CD.

MySpace is a virtual online “networking” community that allows users to set up a personal page, interact with other MySpace members and compile a list of online MySpace “friends.” Bands have set up their own MySpace pages and enlisted their “friends” to promote album releases and concerts and spread the word to others who might never hear of them otherwise.


“A lot of what we’re trying to do is build relationships with consumers,” says Leisa Byars, a marketing expert at the EMI Christian Music Group. “Consumers in that 18-25 bracket are using technology to create relationships with people all over the world.”

Frequently, she said, those relationships are built on common interests like music. “We’ve always talked to friends about music. Now we can share it with the world, through blogging and MySpace.”

It’s no secret that portable digital music players are flying off shelves: Apple sold 14 million iPods in the last quarter of 2005, and downloaded singles outsold CDs for the first time in December _ most of them sold on iTunes.

iTunes’ editorial staff singles out artists across genres, and several Christian acts have won their blessing, including Webb.

When Webb was a member of Caedmon’s Call, the band would make cassettes with songs and interview clips and sent them to campuses it had never visited to help spread the word. But duplicating and sending boxes of cassettes over and over was extremely expensive.

Once the band switched over to downloadable song files, word spread more quickly _ not to mention with less work.


“They’re totally free and people can pass them on to their friends,” Webb said. “I can’t imagine how independent bands did it without the Internet.”

Webb has become a favorite on iTunes, having contributed an “iTunes Exclusive” acoustic set of his songs, several podcasts (radio-style broadcasts of interviews or music made available online) and a celebrity playlist. Even the relatively low-tech podcasts can be effective marketing tools.

“I was told by the company that helps us promote things online that … our podcast was one of the things they’d gotten the most response from out of all their artists,” Webb said.

Celebrity playlists allow fans to see what their favorite artists listen to, Webb said, at no cost to the artist. “I can sit down with someone (virtually) and say, `Here are 16 songs you have to get.’ It was really fun.”

The David Crowder Band, which is on the EMI label, has proven a master of connecting, allowing fans to watch the recording of its latest CD through a webcam setup. The band even invited hundreds of fans out to Crowder’s farm near Waco, Texas, for a barbecue and sing-along included on the record.

Denise George, EMI-CMG’s director of artist development, said technologies like satellite radio and iPods have allowed listeners to personalize their music experience, and labels are now learning to “meet consumers the way we want to experience music.”


One way is to allow customers to hear music before they buy. “It used to be that if it was their favorite artist, they’d buy it,” says Byars. Not anymore, particularly when listeners can sample songs on iTunes, MySpace or artists’ Web sites.

Though new-media promotion is hot, record labels can’t ignore the old mainstays of radio, print media and retail, said Rod Riley, senior vice president of marketing for Word Label Group. Christian music is still particularly driven by radio play, and labels have to get creative, stretching the same marketing budget to cover both old and new media.

“It’s not easy to skin the cat right now,” he said.

The upside is there are more ways than ever to connect artists and fans, a connection Riley sees as ministry. One Word act, Barlow Girl, makes interacting with fans a vital part of its ministry. The group’s online message boards have logged more than 800,000 postings in the last 18 months, and band members regularly go on and chat with fans.

Another band, Pocket Full of Rocks, will post spontaneous worship songs on its Web site.

But not all Christian musicians want their music relegated to the church subculture, and those who want to break out are using new media to reach new audiences.

On a recent Friday night in Dallas’ Deep Ellum club district, the members of independent band Green River Ordinance leapt onto the stage at Club Clearview and ripped through their set to a room buzzing with fans. But the real story wasn’t on the stage or in the audience _ it’s on the audience’s home computers.


Like a growing number of independent acts, Green River Ordinance has taken full advantage of MySpace, building its list of “friends”’ to more than 18,000. That list allows the band to spread the word quickly about concerts and CD releases _ or to mobilize fans as it did for a radio station’s online contest to open for Bon Jovi. The winner, of course, was Green River Ordinance.

As guitarist Jamey Ice recalls, the band members stayed up all night before the contest ended messaging their “friends” to vote for them. Before a recent trip to Tyler, Texas, the band used a MySpace feature to look up users in the area and message them about the show.

“We’d never played there before, but it was packed because we’d `MySpaced’ it so much,” he said.

As its opportunities have expanded, the band has carefully steered away from the “Christian” band label _ it says its music is for anyone, not just Christians _ and technology helps it reach that audience.

When electronic-rock band MuteMath signed a deal with Warner Bros. two years ago, it figured its music would be distributed to the general market on a Warner label and to the smaller Christian market on Warner’s Word label. When mainstream promotion never materialized, the band balked on the deal and turned to MySpace. The act scheduled a coast-to-coast club tour to release its new CD and promoted the disc to its 60,000-plus “friends.”

MuteMath’s popularity scored it a sold-out tour _ and an appearance on the “Late Late Show” with Craig Ferguson _ without the help of a big label.


Now, both Green River Ordinance and MuteMath can demonstrate their fanbase to label suitors by ticket and CD sales, as well as their friends lists and the number of times the songs on their profiles are played.

Webb, formerly of Caedmon’s Call, said the music industry will never be quite the same again.

“I can imagine a time,” he said, “when an artist will make a record and release it completely online _ no packaging, manufacturing, distribution, storage _ none of that.”

Editors: To obtain photos of Derek Webb, Green River Ordinance and Rod Riley, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.

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