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’ 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 Christian 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,” said Leisa Byars, a marketing expert at the EMI Christian Music Group (EMI-CMG). “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 its blessing, including Webb.
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.”
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,” Byars said. Not anymore, particularly when listeners can sample songs on iTunes, MySpace or artists’ Web sites.
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 “friend’s” 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.
Webb 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.” (RNS)
Technology emerges as salvation of Christian music industry
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