The Christian music industry is one aspect of the broader music industry, with a focus on Christian music and subgenres such as gospel music, southern gospel, contemporary Christian music, contemporary worship music, and even traditional church music. It is sometimes called the gospel music industry, a narrower term that does not encompass all the musical genres included here.
Like its broader category, the Christian music industry consists of individuals and organizations that earn money through writing songs, producing recorded music, presenting concerts, and performances on Christian radio. The Christian market also includes some unique aspects, such as hymnal production and church music licensed for congregational singing.
From its roots in the 1920s, the developing Christian music industry exhibited unique tensions between religious, musical, and commercial goals. While it was subject to the same economic and market forces as the entire music industry, the Christian subgenre was also subject to different aesthetic and social boundaries. This was often expressed as a tension between “secular” and “sacred” ideals. Recent scholarship explores why Christian music remained marginal to the general market, was largely critiqued by mainstream media, and was often criticized for being derivative.
History
The contemporary Christian music industry has roots in the late 1960s and early 1970s Jesus movement and its Jesus music artists. The Encyclopedia of Contemporary Christian Music points out three reasons that the Christian music industry developed as a parallel structure to the general music industry. First, the Jesus movement produced a large number of bands in a very short period, which the general market was unable and/or unwilling to absorb.
Even so, the 1970s saw established corporations become involved in the Christian music market. Word Records, founded in 1951, was bought in 1976 by ABC. Other music industry giants also got involved, CBS started a short-lived Christian label, Priority Records, and MCA also fielded a label, Songbird Records, for a time.
While the Jesus movement had ended by the 1980s, the Christian music industry was maturing and transforming into a multimillion-dollar enterprise. The early 1980s saw an increase Christian booksellers taking product, and an increase in sales followed, despite the recession. Still, rock and alternative acts faced a longer battle for acceptance than contemporary acts, as the form was opposed by prominent religious leaders such as Jimmy Swaggart and others on the Christian right. While in 1981 total gospel music industry revenues were approximately $180 million, only ten years later they would total $680 million, according to CCM Magazine.
{| class="wikitable sortable" style="float:right; text-align:center;"
|+RIAA sales, 1995–2000
! Year
! %
! $
! class="unsortable" | Source
|-
| 1995
| 3.1
| 381
|
|-
| 1996
| 4.3
| 538
|
|-
| 1999
| 5.1
| 744
|
|- class="sortbottom"
| colspan="4" style="font-size:80%; text-align:left; margin:0; padding:0; vertical-align:top;"|
{| class="wikitable collapsible collapsed" style="float:top; width:100%;"
|-
! Notes
|-
|
- Percentage figures out of<br /> total music market.
- Dollar figures in millions.
- RIAA figures often differ<br />from those reported<br />by Nielsen SoundScan.
- These figures represent<br />only revenue from album sales,<br />and exclude other sources.
|}
|}
According to RIAA data, market share for sales of Christian music albums more than doubled between 1993 and 1997. This was due to several factors, including consolidation of record labels, and independent Christian bookstores into chains.
In 1985, 90% of Christian music sales originated at Christian bookstores. By 1995, that number had dropped to 64%, with general retailers taking 21%, and the remainder accountable through other methods, such as direct mail. In the late 1990s, general market retailers, especially big box stores such as Best Buy, Walmart, Target, and Blockbuster began carrying a wider selection of Christian music products. By 2000 those stores had surpassed Christian retail in terms of the number of Christian albums sold, according to Soundscan numbers. This phenomenon was partially responsible for crossover successes. P.O.D., for example, sold 1.4 million albums in 2001, although sales at Christian retail outlets accounted for only 10%. Contemporary worship music, a long time staple of the industry, began to gain significant market share in about the year 2000. By focusing on marketing worship music to youth culture, this genre became a growth driver despite the downturn in the general music industry.