Updated with new pages added September - October
2006.
Mission House Music and Undone Recordings added June 2007.
Manna Records updated.
INTRODUCTION
This directory centralizes available information for
many Christian record labels and companies. Both currently active labels and
those which are history are included.
Discographies on the web for older labels are
incomplete at best. Where available, links are provided to the best
source: BSN (Both Sides Now) Publications.
It should be noted that many Christian recordings
were also released in the 50s, 60s and 70s by mainstream labels such as
RCA, Capitol and Columbia. These labels are
not included in this section. Neither are custom artist labels.
THE BUSINESS TODAY
With the commercial success of Christian music in
the 80s and 90s as it moved more and more into contemporary pop music
styles, secular recording companies became interested in ownership. And
the major Christian record companies saw good reason to sell and
pitched their product as the ‘next big music thing.’
It seemed to be a win-win situation: The
Christian labels would get large financial pockets for production and
publicity and most important, mainstream distribution to stores like BestBuy, Target, Kmart and Walmart. In return, the
mainstream record companies would reap the bottom line.
Today the ‘Christian big 3’ are owned
by 3 of the ‘big 4’ mainstream record companies: Word Entertainment is
owned by the Warner Music Group, Sparrow by EMI, and the Provident Music Group (Brentwood, Reunion) by Sony
BMG Music Entertainment.
Also, there are now more independent (indies)
Christian labels then ever, many of whom use the distribution
capabilities of the major Christian labels.
With the acquisition of Columbia House by BMG in 2005, Columbia House’s Power & Glory and BMG’s Sound & Spirit Christian music clubs are now the Christian music division
of BMG Music Service.
• According to the Gospel
Music Association (GMA), Christian/Gospel
music sales rose from $188 million in 1990 to over $700 million annually.
• Over
54.2 million units of CDs,
cassettes, digital albums and digital tracks were sold in 2006.
• Christian/Gospel albums accounted for 6.75% of all album sales in 2006.
This page last updated June 17, 2007.
