I have already written about obstacles to touring Catholic musicians, and why it is hard to market Catholicism. Now I would like to address why the mainstream music recording industries cannot make a profit from music informed by the Catholic world view.
The music industry has its own methods of promoting and distributing product, but the underlying economics is no different from that of selling office supplies or shoes. You want to keep your costs down, your profits high, and make the products only last so long that the customer has to buy more at a later date.
For example, if you wanted to sell ink pens you could take two approaches: 1 ) Create and sell a pen that is of a high quality that never needs to be replaced (except for the ink cartridge), or 2) Create disposable pens that run out of ink and are thrown away. You would only sell a few of the high-quality pens, but you would be able to sell many more disposable pens because they are cheaper and have a higher profit margin.
The music industry is no different. To create high quality music would require much more time to write, more time in the studio, and musicians who have studied their craft longer and who deserve to be paid more. You would have to charge more for a CD or MP3 of this music to make a profit. To make matters worse, this music would be harder to sell to the lowest common denominator of society because less people would find the music accessible.
Like disposable pens, today’s popular commercial music is only meant to last so long. The target audience is generally teenagers who get excited about new pop artists. These teenagers grow up to be young adults and are replaced by another generation of teenagers, who want new, accessible music. They just buy whatever is marketed to them. The music industry has become so interested in the bottom line, as opposed to quality product, that they put out whatever they can move and turn over in a hurry.
Being so young, the tastes of these children (“consumer units” to the industry) are not cultivated enough to know the difference between cheaply made disposable music and thoughtful artistic beauty. What this does is create young adults whose tastes are poorly formed from the beginning and cannot develop the capacity to understand more intricate, subtle, and delicate aesthetics.
The point I am getting at is that the music industry, even the contemporary Christian music industry, stays a viable business because it can continuously sell music based on the premise that it is “new.” But that is the very same reason why Catholic culture has not had any foothold in the music industry, even the Christian market. Catholicism does not stay viable because it is new – quite the opposite. The beauty of Catholicism largely lies in the fact that it holds its old traditions dear.
Catholic music – Gregorian Chant and Classical Masses, for example – is more like the pen of very high quality. Every now and then we see it make a cyclical comeback, but only after it has been taken for granted or not put to use for a few generations.
Another reason why Catholic music does not sell as much as other types of music is that its whole premise is to “want nothing other than to do God’s will” – not to “want more things” or to “idolize pop musicians.” It is hard to get people to buy while simultaneously telling them not to.
Widespread, mainstream music informed by Catholicism has the ability to change the world into a more peaceful and saner place. Please pray to God to make this happen, in whatever form or method that He chooses.
March 16, 2008 at 12:53 pm
I have enjoyed your 2 Catholic music blogs that I read.
But the 2nd blog didn’t address the point about why catholics just can’t make the “cheap” music like the rest. The youth/teens seem to be more or less the same as the protestant youth, and many of them buy the protestant praise band music and go watch protestant bands play (even at protestant churches). I was just wondering your take on this.
March 16, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Mostly, I think, that “the medium is the message.” What Catholics are trying to say is that there is an eternal truth and that our actions and art should somehow represent this type of eternity. So in the music, many Catholic artists find it hard to say something that doesn’t have some sort of eternal implications- In other words it is hard to sing about something that is fleeting.
However, art and music are not philosophy – they ebb and flow with the times, whereas philosophy (and theology) are aimed toward timeless truths. The trick, I think would be to represent the timeless truths through temporal stories and contemporary styles.
Let me know what you think about this and if it helps.
September 15, 2008 at 6:59 am
Hiya Burke…
I think there’s a greatly reductionist view of the Christian music scene here, and why Catholics have yet to be as equals in this arena. I mean, yes, we Catholics have a faith that is ever-ancient/ever-new, but what of the new pockets of evangelicalism (known as ancient-future worship, or emergent worship), that are continually reintroducing people to the ancient forms of worship, including recitation of ancient prayers, readings from the Church Fathers, iconography, and Communion? This is a movement that has continually grown in stature during the last five years.
The bottom line is, us Catholics have a theology that incorporates doctrines that have made Christians of other denominations, specifically the evangelical/interdenominationals amongst us, rather uneasy. Take your pick: Mary? Pope? Purgatory? Confession? The list goes on… And while most radio stations seem to thrive on controversy, the opposite is true for Christian radio stations. They are adamant to find only songs that fit the lowest-common denominator of Christianity, the “Mere” Christianity, the doctrines that nearly every denomination adheres to. “In essentials, unity…”–St. Augustine.
On top of that, the evangelical/interdenominational subculture has thrived on living in its own artistic/media-saturated bubble. Families are discouraged from partaking of the world’s entertainment, saturated with suggestive messages that could undermine the authority of the parents. For years, they had relied upon a chart where if you liked secular artist A, then try listening to Christian artist B. You get to like the music, without allowing room for anti-moral/anti-faith messages to seep thru.
Us Catholics have never been about that. If we have, we’re just getting wise to this whole new venture. But in large, artists have been encouraged to stay in the world, and just not be of it.
When we started topcatholicsongs.com, the goal was to find a way to market Catholic music in a way that made sense to the average Catholic in the pews. And the one thing that held us all together was the liturgy, and more specifically, the liturgical calendar. I mean, a natural observer can tell when Ash Wednesday is.
And it occurred to us that music is very powerful when it is a superior song, and when the melodies and harmonies and instrumentation and production values are stellar, yes, and then on top of that… distills a message, a point, a mini-homily, an educational lesson, a motivational tool, a Scripture memorization device, all of which that can encourage us in our walks.
For example, many Christian radio stations are “Safe for the whole family”, but if it’s during Lent, and I wish to refrain from a song with “Alleluias” until Easter (as is the practice of Catholics, as well as many mainline denominations), then oftentimes I find myself rushing to turn the radio off when an Alleluia-friendly chorus turns on. Or when it’s Advent and I want to anticipate Christ’s coming with Advent-oriented songs, and the culture seems adamant to push secular Christmas songs as if the day had already arrived… to me this defeats the purpose.
Most radio stations, even Christian ones, do not dare to be this counter-cultural. But then again, radio is falling in numbers, partially due to the influence of music downloads and iPod-listeners in the market, discovering that they can create their own extensive playlists, that play like a radio station, except no commercials, and every song a winner.
Because of this change in the market, it has become all the more freeing to find all like-minded songs and group them together, so as to be inspired/motivated/educated/refreshed/pumped-up to live our Catholic-Christian walk in the midst of our media-saturated culture.
So I invite you to join the TopCatholicSongs community, Burke. If you have great songs that are built upon your personal experience with wrestling the Catholic Social Doctrine, we would want to help find avenues–lists–that your songs would best shine.
Peace,
Nick Alexander