As Capitol Christian Music Group marks 50th birthday, faith-based music enters global growth phase

Amid signs of streaming growth for faith-based music, the Official Charts Company launched a dedicated Christian & Gospel singles chart for homegrown talent this year. It was a significant move for an area of music that gets limited coverage – and there are signs of increasing commercial appeal globally for faith-based music. As it marks a landmark 50-year anniversary, the world’s largest faith-based music company, Capitol Christian Music Group (CCMG), last week held the company’s annual Partner Summit at its Nashville headquarters. The afternoon’s programme included a conversation between CCMG president Brad O’Donnell, Interscope Capitol chairman & CEO John Janick and Capitol Music Group chairman & CEO Tom March, and a presentation from Universal Music Group EVP of digital business development and strategy, Jonathan Dworkin . “A lot has changed in 50 years – really a lot has changed since we got together 12 months ago,” Brad O’Donnell told the audience. “There were early signs then about the Christian and Gospel market getting ‘hot’. Things that we would never have imagined before have happened, including how young our fanbase is getting. “Christian and Gospel is now one of the most frontline-focused genres, ahead of Latin, pop, hip-hop and rock. Even more impressive, streaming in our genre grew by 18.5 points in 2025. We are entering an amazing period for faith-based music globally.” The 18.5% year-on-year increase in on-demand audio volume for Christian/gospel was revealed in Luminate data. Tom March, John Janick and Brad O'Donnell in conversation at the CCMG Partner Summit (credit: Aaron Bean) Executives and artists from the wider industry also took part in the discussions, including veteran manager Chris Woltman of Element1, Candice Watkins, CCMG executive vice president of Capitol Christian Music Group, and Chris Lawson Jones of the UK-based Wings Music Group . While the CCMG label might be considered as largely domestic US repertoire, Capitol Music Group chairman & CEO Tom March set us straight on that in our exclusive Music Week Interview earlier this year when he stressed the increasing global appeal of faith-based music. “I think you can see that in Josiah Queen, who we signed in partnership with Capitol Christian Music Group,” March told Music Week. “He’s the second most streamed faith-based artist [non-catalogue] in the world over the last 12 months. He’s breaking in a massive way, he’ll be in arenas very soon.” March described the 23-year-old as the “breakout star of that scene”, alongside another new signing, Lauren Daigle, “who we are really, really excited about”. Both Daigle, a two-time Grammy winner, and Queen attended the CCMG partner summit amid the industry buzz about the strength of faith-based music. “We are the market leaders in the space,” added March. “We have a team of experts there and I’ve put a lot of focus on that part of the business.” There are people of faith all around the world, let’s get to them Tom March Josiah Queen has 5.4 million monthly listeners on Spotify globally and he is now making a streaming impact in the UK. The 2025 single Dusty Bibles has been streamed more than 4.5m times in the UK alone – not huge numbers but impressive for an American Christian contemporary singer-songwriter. Demons, released earlier this year, has surpassed 100m streams globally and reached No.1 at Christian radio in the US and topped the Hot Christian Songs Chart. It has been streamed about 1.5m times in the UK. On Sunday (August 23) Josiah Queen drew 16,081 fans to the Iowa State Fair Grandstand, officially setting the all-time attendance record for a Christian artist at the event. Queen, who just dropped new single Sundays ahead of October’s Damascus Road album, is also selling tickets outside of his home market. “I said the minute that we signed him, ‘We are going out on the road,’” said March, who acknowledged the misplaced perception that Queen’s appeal might be purely domestic. “There are people of faith all around the world, let’s get to them. So my international team engaged with that, we took him all around Europe and he played 150-cap shows everywhere.” A year on, Josiah Queen’s live business has grown considerably – he is now playing UK shows of up 2,000-plus capacity in the UK. Josiah Queen and Brad O’Donnell (credit: Raymond Alston) “Every artist I work with is global,” March added. “It doesn't matter about the genre, there are people we can find all over the world – we just have to get to them and we know how to get to them.” With more than 260,000 tickets sold across his headline tours to date in the US and internationally, Queen kicks off his UK/European trek on September 14 at Belfast Ulster Hall, with stops at Manchester New Century Hall (September 17), London Troxy (September 18) and Paris Alhambra (September 19), as well as dates in the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and Denmark. CCMG has also seen international success with less obvious Christian artists. US rapper and Capitol artist NF has long made an impact in the UK, including peaking at No.2 in the main chart with 2023 album Hope (81,112 units to date). Despite rejecting the “Christian rapper” label, NF’s lyrics mean that he has also been a mainstay at the top of the main UK Christian & Gospel albums chart with his most consumed albums being 2019’s The Search (No.7 peak, 213,955 units to date) and 2018’s Perception, which has amassed 179,717 units despite never charting inside the UK Top 100. In the US, NF has made the Top 3 in the main albums chart with his last four releases, two of them at No.1. “We’ve done brilliant things and continue to do brilliant things with NF, who we work with in tandem with CCMG,” said March. “He’s still one of the biggest artists in the world.” Click here to read our Tom March Music Week interview. MAIN IMAGE: (L-R) Walter Thomas, Tom March, Brad O'Donnell, Rodney Jerkins and Monica Bacon at the CCMG Partner Summit (credit: Raymond Alston) For more stories like this, and to keep up to date with all our market leading news, features and analysis, sign up to receive our daily Morning Briefing newsletter