God RocK, Inc.:
The Business of Niche Music
Popular music in the twenty-first century is increasingly divided into niche markets. How do fans, musicians, and music industry executives define their markets’ boundaries? What happens when musicians cross those boundaries? What can Christian music teach us about commercial popular music? In God Rock, Inc., Andrew Mall considers the aesthetic, commercial, ethical, and social boundaries of Christian popular music, from the late 1960s, when it emerged, through the 2010s.
University of California Press (2021)
Table of Contents:
Introduction: Popular Music, Markets, Margins, and the Curious Case of Christian Music [Spotify playlist]
Part One: Christian Music: An Industry and Its History
Chapter 1: “Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?” The Christian Markets Origins [Spotify playlist]
Chapter 2: The Great Adventure: Commercial Success in the Christian Record Industry and the Price of Profit [Spotify playlist]
Chapter 3: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing? Christian Ethics Encounter Rock [Spotify playlist]
Chapter 4: “Find a Way”: Amy Grant and the Christian Market’s Mainstream [Spotify playlist]
Part Two: Niche Music Markets: Ethics, Profits, and Risk
Chapter 5: Music to Raise the Dead: Christian Music and the Ethics of Style [Spotify playlist]
Chapter 6: Lost in the Sound of Separation: Resistance at Christian Music Festivals [Spotify playlist]
Chapter 7: From Margins to Mainstreams and Back: Crossover Cases and Their Markets [Spotify playlist]
Conclusion: The Stability of Risk and the Risk of Stability [Spotify playlist]
God Rock, Inc. Extras
Leah Payne reviewed God Rock, Inc. for the Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture.
Rock That Doesn’t Roll podcast (2023). Who could a 1990s Christian rock aficionado turn to in order to find the latest and greatest releases? For mainstream music fans, tastemakers included record store clerks of 1990s indie music stores, or retail juggernauts like Tower Records and Wherehouse - the kind of superfans depicted by Jack Black in High Fidelity. But for many evangelical teens of the 1990s, record stores were not the place to find kid-tested, parent-approved music. For that, Christian teens usually had to go to Christian bookstores.
AAR (2023) “author meets critics” panel on God Rock, Inc. Panelists will consider how Christian music as a niche business shapes religious communities in the United States (and beyond), as well as how its many genres and subgenres - pop, rock, metal, rap, hip hop, praise and worship, etc. - reflect and shape evangelical Christian politics, practice, and theology.
Christianity Today (2023). Author Kelsey Kramer McGinnis quotes from God Rock, Inc. in her article on the the corporate consolidation of worship music.
Jason Lee Guthrie reviewed God Rock, Inc. for the Journal of the Music and Entertainment Industry Educators Association (MEIEA).
Christianity Today (2022). Author Kelsey Kramer McGinnis quotes from God Rock, Inc. in her article on the Gospel Music Association’s Dove Awards (the Christian music industry’s answer to the Grammy Awards).
Christianity Today (2022). Author Rachel Seo quotes from God Rock, Inc. in her article on TikTok and Christian recording artist Montell Fish.
Studying Congregational Music:
Key issues, methods, and theoretical perspectives
Studying the role of music within religious congregations has become an increasingly complex exercise. The significant variations in musical style and content between different congregations require an interdisciplinary methodology that enables an accurate analysis, while also allowing for nuance in interpretation. This book is the first to help scholars think through the complexities of interdisciplinary research on congregational music-making by critically examining the theories and methods used by leading scholars in the field.
Co-edited with Monique M. Ingalls and Jeffers Engelhardt.
Routledge (2021)
FOR A LIMITED TIME: save 20% when you purchase the book directly from the publisher using the discount code “FLY21”
Table of Contents:
Part I: Methodological Perspectives
Chapter 2: Worshipping “With Everything”: Musical Analysis and Congregational Worship (Joshua Kalin Busman) [Spotify playlist]
Chapter 4: Ethnography in the Study of Congregational Music (Jeff Todd Titon)
Chapter 5: Re-sounding the History of Christian Congregational Music (Sarah Eyerly)
Part II: Key Issues
Chapter 7: Political Economy and Capital in Congregational Music Studies: Commodities, Worshipers, and Worship (Andrew Mall) [Spotify playlist]
Studying Congregational Music Chapter Previews
Studying Congregational Music, Routledge (2021). Chapter 14, “Ecclesioscapes: interpreting Gatherings around Christian Music in and outside the Church through the Dutch Case of the ‘Sing Along Matthäuspassion,’ ” by Mirella Klomp.
Studying Congregational Music, Routledge (2021). Chapter 13, “Searching for a Metaphor: What Is the role of the Shaliach/Shalichat Tzibur (Leader of Prayer)?” by Jeffrey A. Summit.
Studying Congregational Music, Routledge (2021). Chapter 11, “Congregational Singing and Practices of Gender in Christian Worship: Exploring Intersections,” by Teresa Berger.
Studying Congregational Music, Routledge (2021). Chapter 11, “Studying Byzantine Ukrainian Congregational Music in Canada: Considering Community and Diaspora,” by Marcia Ostashewski.
Studying Congregational Music, Routledge (2021). Chapter 10, “Researching Black Congregational Music from a Migratory Point of View: Methods, Challenges, and Strategies,” by Melvin L. Butler.
Studying Congregational Music, Routledge (2021). Chapter 9, “ ‘We Just Don’t Have It’: Addressing Whiteness in Congregational Voicing,” by Marissa Glynias Moore.
Studying Congregational Music, Routledge (2021). Chapter 8, “Congregation and Chorality: Fluidity and Distinction in the Voicing of Religious Community,” by Jeffers Engelhardt.
Studying Congregational Music, Routledge (2021). Chapter 7, “Political Economy and Capital in Congregational Music Studies: Commodities, Worshipers, and Worship,” by Andrew Mall.
Studying Congregational Music, Routledge (2021). Chapter 6, “Music Theology as the Mouthpiece of Science: Proving It through Congregational Music Studies,” by Bennett Zon.
Studying Congregational Music, Routledge (2021). Chapter 5, “Re-sounding the History of Christian Congregational Music,” by Sarah Eyerly.
Studying Congregational Music, Routledge (2021). Chapter 4, “Ethnography in the Study of Congregational Music,” by Jeff Todd Titon.
Studying Congregational Music, Routledge (2021). Chapter 3, “Mediating Religious Experience? Congregational Music and the Digital Music Interface,” by Anna E. Nekola.
Studying Congregational Music, Routledge (2021). Chapter 2, “Worshipping ‘With Everything’: Musical Analysis and Congregational Worship,” by Joshua Kalin Busman.
Studying Congregational Music, Routledge (2021). Chapter 1, “In Case You Don’t Have a Case: Reflections on Methods for Studying Congregational Song in Liturgical History,” by Lester Ruth.
Studying Congregational Music, Routledge (2021). Introduction, “Interdisciplinarity and Epistemic Diversity in Congregational Music Studies,” by Andrew Mall, Jeffers Engelhardt, and Monique M. Ingalls.
Looking for more information?
Northeastern Global News (2024). A new music streaming service –– Musi –– is turning heads with its free, silent ad-based platform that runs on audio from millions and millions of YouTube videos. Musi isn’t like major streamers like Spotify or Apple Music, but its entry into the streaming wars begs the question: Can anything compete with the likes of Spotify, or is the music streaming landscape set in stone?
Northeastern Global News (2024). The 2010 merger between Live Nation and Ticketmaster is “essentially unfixable,” says a Northeastern antitrust expert. But could the Justice Department take the incredible step of breaking up the two companies?
Northeastern Global News (2024). Billie Eilish recently called out artists who make multiple variants of the same vinyl like Swift does. But Swift is not the first artist to do this, said Andrew Mall, an associate music professor at Northeastern University. Swift is part of a larger trend of those “gamifying” vinyl collecting, where consumers will buy every variant of a record — whether they offer a different cover, record color, or bonus tracks — in order to complete their collection.
IASPM-US conference panel (2024). In 2023, our six-member team was on site in Birmingham, Alabama for five days, building upon over two years of prior research in 2021 and 2022. In this panel, four fieldwork team members share their findings along distinct themes. Together, we explore the ways in which community is substantiated and maintained at Furnace Fest.
MEIEA conference presentation (2024). What is the nature of hardcore, and how does hardcore nostalgia reflect its values and meet its needs? More than merely a marketing ploy, is hardcore nostalgia also an invitation to revisit and romanticize the anxieties of our youth; an attempt at a do-over; or perhaps even an act of emotional and mental self-care? In this presentation, we trace these trends in hardcore and emo to ask: what do we do with nostalgia that asks us to remember when we were young and angry and sad?
Leah Payne reviewed God Rock, Inc. for the Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture.
The Arkansas Traveler (2024). From Ariana Grande to Zach Bryan, TikTok has prevented many artists' music from syncing onto the social media platform. Reporter Mark Garcia quotes Andrew Mall’s insights recently published by the Associated Press.
The Quicky (podcast, 2024). Mamamia podcast house Claire Murphy speaks with Andrew Mall about the emerging licensing standoff between Universal Music Group and TikTok.