On Thursday at Cornerstone Festival, The Phantom Tollbooth hosted it’s annual “State of the Christian Music Industry” discussion. This year’s panel included Radio DJ Chris MacIntosh (“Grandfather Rock”), Promoter Lori Lenz, HM Mag Editor Doug Van Pelt, and Artist/Guitar Tech Jeff Elbel. The Phantom Tollbooth will eventually post a podcast of the discussion, but I took my own notes and I thought I would share them here.

In their opening statements, each panelist discussed their view of the current state of Christian music. Doug observed that harder music is on the rise and used the example of Main Stage this year (which included acts like Underoath, As I Lay Dying, and Norma Jean as examples) Jeff said that garage music with melodic lyrics is making a big comeback right now. Chris stated that as an older fan, he sees Christian Progressive Rock gaining a large underground following, using Glass Hammer and Salem Hill as examples. Lori said that now more than ever there are many good Christian bands in the mainstream market and used Relient K, Copeland, and Underoath as examples. All agreed that technologies like myspace and purevolume are enabling bands to better communicate directly with their fans.

Doug remarked on the high quality of many Christian bands right now. The market is taking notice and booking artists on tours like the Vans Warped Tour and so on. Jeff remarked that it is almost easier for new bands to break out on the mainstream market than established independent bands that already have a “Christian” reputation. One interesting thing that they have all noticed is that Christian bookstores aren’t making as big a dent in sales as they used to. Underoath just hit #2 on the Billboard charts this week and the CBA market only accounted for 5% of their sales. Kids are going to Best Buy or Circuit City or ordering the albums online instead of going to Christian Bookstores to buy Christian music.

One of the questions asked was whether the mass market is going away. Lori observed that Clear Channel stations are currently on the decline while “No Format” stations like Jack and Jill in Los Angeles are on the rise. There are two markets emerging, the casual listener market and the musically knowledgable listener market and radio is starting to try to cater to each audience. For this reason, the mass market will probably never go away (the popularity of American Idol was cited as an example), but there will be more and more options for people who want to be more than casual music listeners.

In the Christian market, Lori observed the rise of “gatekeeper” markets like Walden Media where “family friendly” is the emphasis over religious material (though they can and do produce religious material, e.g. Narnia and the upcoming movie on William Wilberforce.) Publishers like Walden Media are likely to totally envelope Christian marketers because their products are high quality and appeal to both parents and children but have only a selection of religious material so they will appeal to a larger audience. Unless Christian publishers increase their quality of material, they will not be able to compete in this new market.

There was lively discussion concerning whether Christian bands are today leaving the Christian market and abandoning the culture that nurtured them. It was observed that right now it seems to be “fashionable” to be “spiritual” and so many bands with religious overtones are selling well. However, if popular culture turns away from Christianity in the future, will these bands be able to continue to sell or will they have to come crawling back to the Christian market that they left? Will Christian labels take them back?

As the discussion wrapped up, Chris stated that the church as a whole is just now starting to re-embrace the concept that art should come from the church instead of being condemned from the church. Much of this is undoing the work of reformers like Zwingli who believed the church should behave differently than the Catholic church that often sponsored and supported the arts. Calvin and Luther disagreed with Zwingli about this subject, but the last couple of centuries show the church has had a great mistrust of art.

Doug also observed that Christian music is moving into a divide between evangelical music (music meant to spread the Gospel) and pastoral music (music meant to tell stories from a Christian perspective) and that the divide will continue to grow. For this reason, there will always be a need for Christian bookstores to sell music for the church (such as liturgical music and worship music), but the question is how Christian bookstores will continue to handle music not neccessarily meant for evangelism or worship.

Any thoughts?