Saving Souls and Selling CDs: The Mainstreaming of Christian Music Videos

Abstract

Contemporary Christian music has been called the fastest growing form of popular music in the United States today (Dawidoff 42). While traditional gospel music has remained confined within “the individual house of worship, connected to a loose national mosaic of churches” (Ennis 27), the new sound has borrowed from secular styles including hard rock, rap, country, and pop to reach a much larger and more mainstream audience. Already a fixture in a nationwide network of Christian bookstores (Adams A18), contemporary Christian music is becoming more available through secular record stores, retailers such as K-Mart and Wal-Mart, and the well-known Columbia House mail-order club. A key factor in this wider availability has been the entrance of major record companies into the Christian field. Over the past several years mainstream labels such as BMG and EMI have purchased Christian labels, and companies including Virgin and Elektra have signed Christian bands to their rosters (Price, “With” 34). This interest from mainstream investors has enabled contemporary Christian music to garner revenues of some $500 million a year (Bates A18) and to grow at a rate in which the genre is projected to account for 10 to 13 percent of American popular music sales by the end of the century (Dawidoff 42).