Soapbox: Mark Hansen on the market for LDS music

Note: This is part II of Mark Hansen's thoughts on the LDS music scene. Read part I.


The Chicken and the Egg
by Mark Hansen

Here's another take on the LDS music scene, and why it struggles to find itself. The biggest problem that LDS music faces is that it operates under a dark cloud of obscurity. A while ago, at the FCMA workshop (kind of a gathering of LDS musicians), I heard an interesting statistic. An LDS CD that finds a successful audience will sell about 5,000 copies.

I was astonished at that. We have a world-wide church membership of 11+ million, and we're only getting market penetration of several thousand? Even Utah church membership is over a million and a half. That's 0.3%!

Now, I can hear debates of all sorts that would impact those statistics. But the bottom line to me is that it points out a significant problem impacting LDS music. By and large, our audience doesn't know we're even out there. If I were to sit at temple square, interrupt people and ask then if they recognized certain names, I'd bet there would be only one or two names that most members of the church on the street would be able to name.

Well, that's assuming I didn't get thrown off temple square, or they didn't presume I was an anti-mormon street preacher, but that's another blog post altogether ...

So, the biggest challenge for LDS musicians and the artists is: How to educate an audience that doesn't even know it exists. The Internet is already playing a big role in that. Members from all over the country, all over the world are reaching out to find other members, and discovering that there's a vast network out there connecting members of the church. Even still, the numbers, when compared to 11 million, seem small. It's gonna take time.

So, which comes first, the art or the audience? Is there no audience because there is relatively little art for them to participate in? Or is there little art because there is no audience to appreciate it? And as you began to bring in other sub-genres of art, that narrows things even more. For example, in the music scene, there's very little rock music being made. Ask the labels why not, and they'll tell you that there's no market for it. Nobody wants it. But maybe the people who want it don't know it's there. The Singles Ward and the RM soundtracks sat at the top of the Deseret Book bestseller shelves for several months. Doesn't that imply a burgeoning market? For the most part, those that like rock (particularly harder rock) don't shop for CD's at Deseret Book.

Other sub-genres face the same fate. People who like styles that haven't been represented in LDS music, generally don't shop for music at traditional LDS outlets because their music isn't there. And musicians who want to make that kind of music for the LDS audience either don't make their CD's or don't make them available in traditional outlets because their audience isn't there.

So, is it the chicken or the egg?

The solution is simply time. Both ends of the equation have to come together. Gradually, more and more artists will make divergent music. More and more audience members will hear about it or seek it out.

Editor's Note: I agree with Mark's thoughts and only add that the same analysis could be applied to the markets for Mormon fiction and film (with very little modification).