Internet And Worship Bands

Essay by PaperNerd ContributorUniversity, Bachelor's July 2001

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Internet and Worship Bands Corporate worship has been growing for the past ten years. Many colleges and young adults have fallen in love with the opportunity to worship their Lord and Savior through song. This passion that people are expressing as changed the Christian music industry. Instead of bands pushing "their music" they have now turned towards sharing "God's music." This has caused an overwhelming amount of worship bands to hit the music scene. These bands range from high school students who are ministering in their local community, to older individuals who have expressed their talents through extensive travel and evangelizing.

With the increase in the worship bands, there has also been a dramatic increase in the information highway, the Internet. As for me, given the talent and opportunity to be apart of one of these worship bands, have found the internet a blessing in being able to get "our name" and music out there.

Bands can use the internet to allow people access to their music, bio's, history, merchandise, and even enables the customer to book the band for an event. The two profit driven attributes of having a web site would be the ability of the customer to purchase the band's merchandise and allowing easy access to booking information.

I researched a few worship bands and found that even though there are some start up costs to creating a web page, they found their "fan" and interest base grew larger. The bands that I researched were the %%%%%% Band (&&&&&.com), %%%%%% (%%%%com), %%%%%% and Band (%%%%%%.org), and Mercy Me (mercyme.net).

After implementing their web sites, they all saw an increase in merchandise sales. This web site gives the customer a chance to purchase maybe a shirt or a CD from the particular artist. This same customer may have heard them live, but didn't have the money at the time, or linked to the web site and heard sound bytes of the band and enjoyed it, so they bought the music. After talking to %%%%%, he told me that he is excited about his web page and the opportunities it holds for them financially in this area. I would say on an average that merchandise sales increased to about 40% after implementing these web sites.

The ability of booking on the Internet is the aspect in which %%%%% and Band find the most appealing. A link on their site enables the user to pull up a document for booking the band. Along with the document, there are also facts on how much it costs to book the band, the bands needs, what the band can do for the customer, and bookings already scheduled for the band. After filling out the document, the customer then emails it to the band. The band then looks over the information and decides whether or not they will do the booking. If an agreement is reached then the band sends a contract by email, with a fax number, for the customer to fill out and sign and return. This process has saved %%%%% and Band time in using the phone and costs of those conversations. They have also found that it is more appealing to the customer, not only because it gives you a more professional image, but also because they can do the booking on their own time and not worry about deadlines. All in all, the bands receive about 3 more bookings per month then when they were without the Internet web sites. If the band charges $700 a booking then the band would make about $2,100 more a month. Being a worship band, that extra money can go along way.

After conducting this research, I have found that if you plan on starting a worship band, then starting an Internet venture to go along with it is well worth the time, effort, and expense. The wave of the future is the Internet, why not jump on board?