We Are the Music Makers: Converging and Diverging Practices among Christian Major and Independent Record Labels

Society for Ethnomusicology

SEM, Los Angeles, California, November 11, 2010.

This paper’s title is taken from an album by Joy Electric.

Material from this paper was published in God Rock, Inc.

Abstract

The Christian popular music recording industry, like its secular counterpart, includes both major and independent record labels. All three major labels (headquartered in or near Nashville, TN) are owned by secular labels: EMI Christian Music Group by EMI, Word Entertainment by Warner, and Provident Label Group by Sony. While independent labels typically have major label distribution agreements (for example, both Tooth & Nail Records and Centricity Music are distributed by EMI), they maintain a degree of autonomy in their ownership and operations. Existing research posits independent labels as explicitly resisting and critically reframing existing recording industry ideologies and practices; for these observers, corporate-level resistance is aurally reflected in the relatively inaccessible music they produce and distribute (see, e.g., Hesmondhalgh 1997, Middleton 2002, Thompson 2004, O’Connor 2008). Thus, independent labels’ music and practices are perceived as distinct from and peripheral to those of the major labels, which are dismissed as monolithic, profit-oriented, and predictable. However, my research into the Christian music recording industry suggests that major and independent labels cannot always be distinguished by their music and practices. Indeed, their business strategies, practices, and musical styles—complicated by differing perspectives on the intersections of faith, commerce, and art—converge and diverge in ways not clearly anticipated or taxonomized by existing models. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with Christian music recording industry “cultural intermediaries” in 2009–2010, this paper’s nuanced study of Christian record labels contributes to a broader center-periphery perspective on the mediation of popular music in the United States.