November 17th, 2003

Mormon Musicians Dedicated to Quality, Not Just Religion

A Soft Answer picked this article up which has a couple interesting pieces of information.

“Jericho Road did what no LDS artist had done before, selling 30,000 CDs in the first six months.”


Not bad. That’s about $270,000 profit in 6 months.



Brett Raymond said that he only makes about 10% of his income from LDS music. The majority is made from writing music for TV.



A companion article called “Opinions flare over LDS commercialization” really bothered me. The article is about members of the church selling church related items. Like prophet trading cards, temple trading cards, LDS genre films, and I would assume LDS based music.

“‘I have a problem with selling church items,’ said Jessica Peterson, a BYU Bookstore employee. ‘The church has asked people not to do it. Yet, we still carry it.’”


Are you serious? When has the church ever asked members not to sell their music, their films, or their art if it’s about or related to the church? Believe it or not there are members who believe that LDS musicians should not be selling their music. They say that is making money off the gospel.

“Deseret Management, the parent company of Deseret Book, had revenues of more than over $800 million for the year 2001. This included sales of such LDS themed merchandise as books, hobby materials, music, and movies.”


Deseret Book is owned by the church. The president of Deseret Book is Sister Sheri DEW How are we to have uplifting music and quality entertainment if the members who create it are supposed to do it for free? Are they to spend the $10-20,000 dollars it takes to create a CD and give it away? Is it so wrong for a bunch of neighborhood kids to trade temple cards instead of sports cards which represent players that are not role models for kids? Is it wrong for me to buy a beautiful Greg Olsen picture of the Savior for my living room?



I don’t think so.

posted by John in Entertainment 

This entry was posted on Monday, November 17th, 2003 at 8:26 pm and is filed under Entertainment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

8 Responses to “Mormon Musicians Dedicated to Quality, Not Just Religion”

  1. Hugh says:

    When will I be able to download LDS music from the iTunes music store? (For use with my ipod).

    November 17th, 2003 at 11:14 pm
  2. Rex says:

    There was even a discussion on the LDS Musicians discussion group a few weeks ago, where someone suggested it was inappropriate for the apostles themselves to write books etc., because we already know what the doctrine is, so anything else they must be doing for profit. When you start questioning the Quorum of the Twelve like that, it’s pretty obvious where the problem lies, and it’s not with the general authorities.

    November 18th, 2003 at 6:52 am
  3. John says:

    Rex, I loosely followed that thread and was amazed at the responses. If I remember right someone said that some members might think they need to purchase everything that the apostles write because they would be afraid of missing some doctrine.

    I think if you read your scriptures, attend church, and listen or watch conference you’re not going to miss anything. If you need some motivation on a particular topic then pick up a book at Deseret Book. I don’t see anything wrong with that.

    November 18th, 2003 at 7:21 am
  4. John says:

    Hugh, that would be awesome. I’ll have to check to see what’s involved with getting music on iTunes.

    November 18th, 2003 at 7:23 am
  5. Hugh says:

    John, I think you would probably have to go through an indie label that has an existing relationship with Apple.

    ITMS would be very convenient for me. I’m really a newbie when it comes to the LDS music scene, but have purchased a number of Kenneth Cole & EFY CDs in the past two years.

    I also know about 6 other members that have ipods and probably 15-20 members who have ibooks or imacs.

    November 18th, 2003 at 10:41 pm
  6. Andrew Porter says:

    I’m co-owner of a computer store (The Mac Shoppe) in Idaho Falls, Idaho. We service and sell dozens of Macs each month -more than half of our clients are LDS. An iTunes option would be fabulous -and we would definitely put the word out if it was available!

    Keep in mind that there are 2 facets to iTunes…

    1) the ability to receive streaming internet radio (such as Live 365).

    2) the ability to download music from Apple’s iTunes Store – which is now available in both Windows and Mac OS versions (www.apple.com/itunes).

    Seems like it wouild be easy to set up the streaming part just by giving out the URL for customers to type in to iTunes ‘Open Stream’ dialog box. I know a lot of the websites that offer streaming radio have the option of clicking either Windows Media Player or iTunes. When you click on iTunes it will download a small document/applet that launches iTunes and places the URL in it. I just went to Radiostorm.com. When i clicked on the Classic Rock option it downloaded a file that pointed to : http://64.236.34.97:80/stream/1014. Wish I had more info than that. If I find out more I’ll contact you.

    November 19th, 2003 at 1:05 am
  7. Tirzah says:

    It’s Sheri Dew, not Cheri.
    By the way I agree people should be able to make a living at what makes them happy. And we who want to enjoy good music and have it in our homes should be willing to pay for it. If we weren’t it would be very hard to come by and we’d have to have a lot of really good freinds with their own recording studios. :razz:

    April 7th, 2004 at 5:07 pm
  8. John says:

    Thank you. I have corrected the mistake. :oops:

    April 7th, 2004 at 5:29 pm