Christian worship artists
Over roughly the same time period (2008-2014), Christian/Gospel sales dropped from 29.79 million albums to 17.36 million-or by about 58 percent. By 2014, the number had dropped drastically to about half that: 257 million album sales annually. Back in 2007, the United States saw 500.5 million albums sold annually in all genres. In point of fact, American album sales in all genres have been in decline since the advent of the digital age. The decline of CCM is more than just a reflection of a smaller purchasing audience. He writes that “the descent of CCM is a reflection of America’s waning interest in Christianity as a whole.” While it’s true that fewer North Americans today self-identify as Christian than in generations past, it’s not as if Evangelicals-the primary audience of CCM music-have suddenly dropped to a third of their original numbers in recent years. But I might, perhaps, argue a little with Huckabee’s interpretation of those numbers. “In 2014, that number had plummeted to 17 million.” In other words, the CCM market today is a mere third of what it once was. “In CCM’s heyday, approximately 50 million CCM albums were sold annually,” he writes. Recently The Week published a provocative piece entitled “Who Killed the Contemporary Christian Music Industry?” In it, Tyler Huckabee notes that the CCM industry has shrunk dramatically.