Award-winning artists voice their thoughts about challenges and concerns

Christian music continues to touch and change lives, even as those involved in its creation and distribution wrestle with changes in the industry.We turned to some leading artists for their opinions on the issues. We asked 2010 Dove Award winners:

 What is the greatest challenge facing Christian music?

How has the digital revolution impacted you?

Will the Christian music world change because of the digital revolution, and if so, how?

What has encouraged you most in the last year?

What can Christian retailers do to support and make the most of the category?

Jason Crabb // Country Recorded Song of the Year, "Somebody Like Me"

Special Event Album, Glory Revealed II

Greatest challenge: Media outlets. It's difficult for Christian music to compete with secular music space in many of the retail outlets that sell our product.

Digital impact: It's so easy to download our music to computers, iPhones or MP3 players and not have to pay for it, so it has impacted record sales drastically. Think of it like this: If you were the owner of Wal-Mart and people walked in and grabbed whatever they wanted off the shelf and walked out without paying for it, how long could you stay in business? I've read where 95% of digital downloads in the U.K. are illegal and over 75% here in America are illegal. With numbers like that, you can see how it's impacting me as an artist and my record label.

 Changing scene: There is no way to protect yourself from getting music stolen from you. The No. 1 person to ask would be artist and record company representatives. There are positives and negatives. Instead of people buying records now for two or three songs, they only have to buy those two or three songs online. You have to make sure you choose great songs, but definitely the negative outweighs the positive.

Personal encouragement: First and foremost, hearing (of) people giving their lives to the Lord; testimonies that my music has helped people through tough times and tough days, how it has encouraged them to keep fighting, how my music has impacted their lives and others—that is what encourages me to keep doing what we're doing every day.

Retail support: I would love to see a group of people from artists, record companies and retailers, from every genre of Christian music, to come together and brainstorm ideas on how we could all better one another.

Group 1 Crew

Rap/Hip Hop Recorded Song of the Year, "Movin'"

Greatest challenge: The greatest challenge facing Christian music today is its ability to cross genres and accommodate a world of listeners who want quality sound that fits their lives. We need more diverse sounds, more acceptance of various styles that are all coming together with one goal—to spread our ministries and help listeners find their faith.

Digital impact: The digital movement has revolutionized how we can connect with our fans. It has also helped us get our name out there to music lovers with added benefit of instant gratification.

Changing scene: We absolutely think the digital revolution will ignite change in the contemporary Christian music market as well as all of the different music genres.

Personal encouragement: What has encouraged us the most is the ministry that is going on with our music. Fans are finding hope, faith, love and deliverance from dark situations through the music that our industry releases. That is amazing! To impact people in such a way is an incredible feeling ... a true honor.

Retail support: Simply continue to support the records released by our format and embrace digital possibilities on the retail front.

The Isaacs 

Bluegrass Album of the Year, Naturally

Greatest challenge: The greatest challenge facing Christian music today is the lack of radio airtime. When fans don't get to hear their music over the airwaves, it's hard for them to know what they like so they can go out and buy it or download it.

Digital impact: Digital downloads are good because people get to enjoy the music almost immediately after purchasing. But, on the down side, we as the artists suffer financially from the loss of hard-copy sales. The profit margin with actual CDs is much greater for us than digital downloads.

Changing scene: The Christian music world has already changed due to the lack of hard-copy CDs being sold at retail.

Personal encouragement: We're encouraged because we know that people are still buying our products at retail. In our economy today, it's hard for people who buy tickets to come to a show and then spend more money on CDs and merchandise. We do, however, still do reasonably well in sales at our shows.

Retail support: Christian retail stores need to offer a wide variety of Christian music, not just the top-10 artists. Also, in secular retail stores, the Christian music industry needs to make sure we too have ample space to display our music.

Randy Phillips (pictured left in photo)  (Phillips, Craig & Dean)

Inspirational Album of the Year, Fearless

Greatest challenge: The digital age of downloading an individual song versus buying a CD has changed record companies and the way industry does business. The economy has turned touring upside down. The future of full-scale concerts and a hard ticket seems to be morphing into something else. The music groups that will survive and thrive are the ones that can reinvent themselves and do music in a different format and paradigm. God is up to something. We've got to figure out what it is. The challenge is the fear in a global economy that is reshaping music, reshaping methods. But the gospel of Christ in music will prevail. God always finds a way to get His message to the people He loves.

Digital impact: I buy a song instead of an album. As a writer, I am pleased concerning downloads, but as an artist, I am torn. People are not grasping the entire spectrum of songs by listening to six songs. Most artists are trying to tell a story from the opening song to the last song. Taking a slice out of the middle gives you instant thrills/chills, but the listener is missing the journey.

 

Changing scene: Nashville has completely changed in terms of the Christian record industry. Faces have changed. Companies have merged, downsized, restructured. Nashville is a different place. Sometimes a sleeker model is good to make us more effective, sometimes it's reacting to the times. Life seems cyclical to me, and I believe things will come back (for the) better.

Personal encouragement: "Revelation Song" being No. 1 for 17 weeks straight. When you've been a Christian artist for 20 years, you get the sense that people want something unknown—fresh, new faces—so to have a song like that (that) radio embraced and audiences embraced was just so energizing. It encouraged me to keep being faithful to the calling, to be skillful and trust that God is full of surprises.

Retail support: Christian retailers understand that Christian music—unlike other music—affects earth and eternity. When someone walks in their store burdened or trying (to) explain loss, a retailer can point them to an artist or a song that completely changes the atmosphere into a God-embrace. As a pastor, I've never seen so many people full of fear and despair about our nation, our economy, the uprisings in the Middle East—what a great opportunity to show them that God sits upon the circle of the earth. He is in control.

Sidewalk Prophets

New Artist of the Year

Greatest challenge: This question is really important and worthy of note. What seems to be the greatest challenge facing Christian music is trying to keep a strong presence as the entire music industry shifts into new forms of distribution and engagement. The positive impact of Christian music will always have value, but as the digital age grows, it will become increasingly important that we as Christians be as innovative as ever to spread the gospel. This doesn't necessarily mean we create our own digital subculture, but instead we should be beckoned to create art that is so rich in content that it turns the heads and opens the hearts of people who may have never heard of Christ and His love for us.

 Digital impact: The digital revolution has opened so many new ways to connect with people. Whether it's videos on YouTube.com, songs on iTunes or great content on a Web site, these are great tools we can use to communicate with. For Sidewalk Prophets, using video to communicate our hearts has been one of our favorite things to do. It gives us a chance to let people who may never meet us in person to see that we are real people just living and loving life together. It's one thing to be able to perform on stage and share your heart, but it's completely refreshing that with the tools available now, we can communicate our hearts via the Internet through video, audio.

Changing scene: The Christian music world has already changed so much because of the digital revolution—the speed at which all things digital has flourished caught everyone off guard. Our guess is that we're anywhere between five and 10 years behind because no one was prepared for how huge the digital revolution would be. It's a volatile time for music as a whole, but not a "scary" time. In fact, these next few years are going to be interesting as great minds finally catch up and begin to figure out how to best utilize digital media. We should all be concerned if it doesn't change. As long as we're moving forward and being innovative, only good things can come from change.

Personal encouragement: The most encouraging thing has been the increasing amount of ways music can be seen/heard through digital media. In the near future, mobile devices (particularly cell phones) will become the top way for us to communicate. With everyone building new "apps" and cool ways to distribute content, this is becoming a huge and critical way for artists to connect with fans.

Retail support: The real goal is finding a way to meld physical retail locations and digital retail locations. One setback is that you can only invest so much into a person's life, digitally. Retailers who follow Christ need to put relationships at the top of the priority list. Face-to-face, loving relationships are what should and will define Christians. If we're able to build thriving outlets in our local communities, this will open the doors for a strong digital presence. This will not work vice versa—when we eliminate the true relationship between brothers and sisters in Christ and become strictly a "virtual" outlet, then we are slowly but surely losing grip on the reason we were created. Digital media is a great tool and it's best utilized when it's implemented to strengthen and enrich community and not used as a substitute for true community.