Interview with Christian music executive John Mays of Centricity Music

John Mays is one of the most respected exec­u­tives in Chris­t­ian music hav­ing dis­cov­ered and signed Matt Red­man, Point of Grace, Nicole Norde­man, War­ren Barfield, Cindy Mor­gan, Scott Krip­payne and the Pas­sion wor­ship record­ings. He worked in A&R at Word, Spar­row and Star Song Records, and sat at the helm of Ben­son Records as pres­i­dent of the leg­endary label. Mays co-founded Cen­tricty Music in 2003. Their cur­rent ros­ter includes Aaron Shust, Down­here, Jaime Jam­gochian and more.

I orig­i­nally con­nected with John to tap into his exper­tise in the Chris­t­ian music busi­ness when I was doing research for my new book that I am writ­ing on book­ing and pro­mo­tion for the Chris­t­ian indie artist. This inter­view is what resulted and will be of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to those who are pur­su­ing a career as a Chris­t­ian music artist, how­ever much of this infor­ma­tion that John pro­vides has rel­e­vance, regard­less of genre.

HUGH: Hello John. Thanks so much for this inter­view! I was read­ing one of your blog posts called “What we want, what we need,” and there was a part that stuck out to me regard­ing what you look for when sign­ing new artists: (We are look­ing for) “people who are con­cerned and curi­ous about all that they see and expe­ri­ence, and who process those things into music that some­how leaves the lis­tener dif­fer­ent… for­ever. We’re look­ing for artists.” This is some­thing that I hit upon con­sis­tently with musi­cians, bands and singers that I work with: the need to be an artist. There are many ele­ments to con­sider as you artic­u­lately describe in that blog post. With that being said, What can an artist do to align them­selves for greater vis­i­bil­ity, enabling them to catch the ear of a major label?

JM: Hi Hugh. Good to con­nect with you. With tech­nol­ogy being the ever-changing gift that it is to today’s inde­pen­dent artists, there are almost more things one can do than there is time to do them! But on our web­site, I tried to gen­er­al­ize four big-picture cat­e­gories of the sorts of things that usu­ally catch our atten­tion. This is by no means meant to be a com­pre­hen­sive list; but the items are listed in order of impor­tance to us.

1. Work Ethic. I once heard Mar­garet Becker tell some indie artists that before she was signed, she felt like she was dig­ging a trench with her bare hands. When she signed, the label gave her a shovel, but she still had to do the dig­ging! I like that image because it helps artists to under­stand how much patience and per­sis­tence is required, and the real­ity that no one will ever work as hard to get their music exposed as them­selves. We can’t work with peo­ple who don’t under­stand this.
2. Songs. For­tu­nately, writ­ing and record­ing great songs con­tin­ues to play a sig­nif­i­cant role in the mar­ketabil­ity of an artist. Through all the changes in the music biz, this seems to remain the one, con­sis­tent fac­tor in build­ing and sus­tain­ing a suc­cess­ful music career. If you are con­sis­tently writ­ing great songs, either by your­self or with oth­ers, we’re interested.
3. Qual­i­fied Unique­ness. I use the word “qual­i­fied” because sim­ply say­ing we’re look­ing for “unique” artists isn’t totally accu­rate. We want artists who are unique enough to not sound like every­thing else out there; but also sound enough like every­thing else out there that it still can have mass appeal for it’s time. Tricky stuff. If you’re mak­ing com­mer­cial music, AND that music has an iden­ti­fi­able dis­tinc­tion to it, we’re interested.
4. Tal­ent. We’ll never sign any­one who’s not tal­ented on some level, but we’ll prob­a­bly never again be able to sign some­one on tal­ent alone. There’s sim­ply too much noise out there, good and bad, to rely on tal­ent to cut through. With­out a good show­ing in the first three cat­e­gories (listed above), it’s almost impos­si­ble to gain vis­i­bil­ity for an artist or band, regard­less of the level of talent.

HUGH: I agree John. I hear indie artists every day that have enor­mous poten­tial, but don’t under­stand the impor­tance of your first point. Hav­ing patience, per­sis­tence and putting forth a con­certed effort can have sub­stan­tial impact on an artists suc­cess (or lack of) – it often comes down to stay­ing power and extreme tenac­ity. Let me ask you, do major labels still have their ear to the street? Or is it more of the artist ris­ing above to get the attention?

JM: Each label is prob­a­bly dif­fer­ent, based on their phi­los­o­phy and what they can afford. We (Cen­tric­ity Music) place a high enough value on dis­cov­ery that we fund an A&R depart­ment that can do both things…listen to all that is pitched, and scout for careers that we see bub­bling up out there on the land­scape, along with the things that just sound inter­est­ing to us.

HUGH: Tell us a bit about Becky?

JM: Ha! Yes. Good ol’ Becky. “Becky” has prob­a­bly been blown out of pro­por­tion over time. A few years ago radio sta­tions did some demo­graphic sur­veys of their lis­ten­ers, who are pri­mar­ily women. Some­where along the way, that woman was per­son­i­fied as “Becky,” and con­se­quently, that’s become the name given to the typ­i­cal Chris­t­ian radio lis­tener. The moniker has become sort of infa­mous since then, as artists and labels will lis­ten to new songs and won­der if “Becky” will like it! In truth, we need to be grate­ful for these women since they sup­port so much of our music. She is the 32–54 year old lis­tener to Chris­t­ian music’s Adult Con­tem­po­rary radio for­mat, which rep­re­sents most of our exposure.

HUGH: And how about younger peo­ple, such as teenagers or col­lege stu­dents. What kind of impact do they have in regard to Chris­t­ian music con­sump­tion? I see many of them tun­ing into bands like Hill­song United.

JM: Hon­estly, it’s an area of con­cern industry-wide. There is a Chris­t­ian radio for­mat called “CHR” whose model is designed to reach the 18–24 demo­graphic, which of course, is dif­fi­cult to do with all the media voices com­pet­ing for their atten­tion. It does pro­vide a good plat­form for bands like Skil­let and Red, but most of us in the CCM com­mu­nity want to do a bet­ter job of find­ing ways to reach that audience.

HUGH: What dis­tri­b­u­tion out­lets are used to sell Chris­t­ian music?

JM: Depend­ing on the style of music, as much as half of a record’s sales can be sold dig­i­tally (most of that being iTunes and Ama­zon), and about half sold phys­i­cally through Chris­t­ian book­stores. Very few titles are sold any longer in Tar­get, Best Buy or Wal­mart since they have cut back so much on the real estate they com­mit to music. There are some direct-to-consumer sales that hap­pen through label and artist’s web sites, but it accounts for very lit­tle in the larger picture.

Also, some artists do well sell­ing prod­uct at their live shows. This is espe­cially true for the Gospel and South­ern Gospel for­mats. Indie artists make much of their liv­ing through what they sell off the table at their shows.

HUGH: You know, I’ve noticed that CCM tends to get flack in regard to sound­ing very sim­i­lar and “for­mat­ted.”  Do you feel that this is some­thing that the indus­try has done on pur­pose (stay­ing with “what works”)?

JM: I don’t think this is a crit­i­cism that is pointed exclu­sively toward CCM. It’s cer­tainly true about CCM, but it’s also true about Hip Hop, Pop, R&B, Coun­try and most other com­mer­cial music formats.

And yes, all these indus­tries make the music they make “on pur­pose” since they are all still basi­cally radio dri­ven. The radio sta­tions test their audi­ences and add the songs that score the high­est to their playlists. The labels then try to sign artists and pro­duce music that will test well with that lis­tener since radio is still THE biggest plat­form for expos­ing music. Not as big as it once was, but still the biggest.

When radio plays your song, your sales go up (in most cases). Since sell­ing music is what labels do (or hope to do!), they are going to try and pur­posely pro­duce music that peo­ple like and will buy.

Of course, some labels will also take chances on artists that are out­side the for­mat. How­ever those artists end up rely­ing on social media to get their music exposed and the sea of indie artists using the same means tends to make it very dif­fi­cult to cut through.

HUGH: Speak­ing of tak­ing chances, at one time, labels very much nur­tured their artists. Then, it seemed to turn away from that, and what­ever stuck, was what they pro­moted.  Do you feel that artist devel­op­ment will find its way back, or is that a thing of the past, from a label standpoint?

JM: Well, “devel­op­ment” can mean dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tions. Labels still do a lot of devel­op­ment in the sense of help­ing new artists/bands hone in on their style, sound, and espe­cially songs. Some still get involved in devel­op­ment of their live show, either by using some­one in-house, or through a pro­fes­sional per­for­mance coach. Most still pro­vide media train­ing and PR sup­port. Some still pro­vide tour sup­port to buy artists open­ing slots on tours.

What isn’t seen as much any longer is the label that will release three or four full record­ings (10–14 songs), los­ing money on each of them while hop­ing for the right com­bi­na­tion of tim­ing and song. For most labels, with their busi­ness model dec­i­mated and try­ing their best to sur­vive, it’s sim­ply not afford­able to keep re-investing in artists whose record­ings don’t return their invest­ment. In the good ol’ days, there was sim­ply more mar­gin for that, so you saw it more often, and many called this “devel­op­ment.” Not so much any­more, but I think that’s more a func­tion of the eco­nomic real­i­ties, and not the desire of the team at the label.

HUGH: Besides the excep­tions (your Cast­ing Crowns, Chris Tomlin’s), what con­sti­tutes a suc­cess­ful album cam­paign in terms of sales for a major league release in the CCM genre?

JM: “Major league release” is a fairly sub­jec­tive term! Ten years ago, there were prob­a­bly 10 artists who could sell plat­inum. Today, maybe one. Maybe. Most labels would con­sider it a big suc­cess if their “major league release” debut did 100,000 in its life­time. And you could count these on one hand today.

HUGH: Do you see the role of tech­nol­ogy as a hin­drance to the indie artist try­ing to get signed, or a ben­e­fit?  For instance, The Inter­net has opened up the chan­nels of dis­tri­b­u­tion, how­ever it has also made it pos­si­ble for any­one to throw up their music, thus cre­at­ing a glut­ton of music in the marketplace.

JM: In gen­eral, tech­nol­ogy has been one of the best things to ever hap­pen for an indie artist. To be able to make a record­ing so inex­pen­sively, and get it dis­trib­uted all over the world for free is an amaz­ing thing. Yes, it does result in a glut of music out there that is harder and harder to rise above, but that’s not so bad since typ­i­cally, what will help you rise above is a great song and a great record­ing. Maybe all this tech just makes an artist have to reach deeper for bet­ter work, and if so, that’s a good thing.

HUGH: What chal­lenges to you see for the future of CCM?

JM: From a busi­ness per­spec­tive, our chal­lenges won’t be any dif­fer­ent than any other com­mer­cial music for­mat. Basi­cally, we will con­tinue to try and fig­ure out how to stay in busi­ness when the prod­uct they offer (music) is no longer con­sid­ered some­thing to be paid for. That’s a big one.

From a spir­i­tual per­spec­tive, most of the mar­ket­ing we do (pri­mar­ily radio) is built on what the con­sumer (lis­tener) wants to hear. As dis­cussed above, this can result in music that is flat, for­mu­laic, com­mon and unin­spir­ing. Not always, but I think our chal­lenge mov­ing in to the future will be how to address the heart as well as the ear, and how to reach that lis­tener with what they need, as much as what they want.

HUGH: Thanks so much for your time, John. This pro­vides some great infor­ma­tion for our read­ers. One quick ques­tion before we wrap this up. Do you see the role of indie Chris­t­ian artists expand­ing in the indus­try?

JM: Def­i­nitely. One could make an argu­ment that, as labels con­tinue to fail, the sys­tem we know now could even­tu­ally evolve into an indus­try made up of only inde­pen­dent artists.

Since there is no pro­fes­sional voice help­ing to bring objec­tiv­ity to the indie’s work other than them­selves (or friends and fam­ily), one could also argue that as indies become the “indus­try,” the level of medi­oc­rity con­tin­ues to rise, and of course, that has far reach­ing impli­ca­tions for the value of music in cul­ture and people’s lives in the com­ing generations.

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