Destra taps into online Christian music market

Stan Beer
Friday, 17 December 2004 07:00

IT Industry - Development

Internet hosting and online entertainment company, Destra Corporation Limited (ASX:DES), has signed an agreement with evangelical music provider Resource Christian Music (RCM) to provide digitised online music through its website, www.resource.com.au.

Christian music for evangelical devotees is apparently a fast growing global market, which DES intends to tap into through its online music platform.

"We launched the service today and expect to experience a strong demand for downloads in Christian music," said Dennis Prince, founder and managing director of RCM.

Prince claims recent studies reveal that Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, which use a cross-section of congregational music in all services, are among the fastest growing churches, many with a growth rate in double figures over the past decade. "Christian music is often misunderstood by the media. It is contemporary music with a strong message delivered in a variety of music styles. The younger set is increasingly embracing this music," Prince said.

RCM distributes its own music CDs from Australia and abroad. The company supplies 200 retailers directly as well as consumers through its website. DES division destramusic.com has currently digitised over 500 of RCM's tracks. Music will be available through a host of online websites connected to destramusic.com, including Sanity, Dick Smith Powerhouse,Chaosmusic.com and others.

According to DES CEO, Domenic Carosa, the religious Christian music is a vastly underestimated market with huge potential. "Few people realise that Christian and congregational music generates twice as many sales as Country and Western music," Carosa said.

The songs are encoded in Windows Media Audio (WMA), a format, which has built-in technology allowing customers to not only copy purchased songs onto a CD multiple times, but also transfer to portable media players. Advanced technology also prevents the tracks from being transferred to pirated music websites.

"We see a real competitive edge in making digital downloads available to our customers. As mp3 players continue to come down in price, coupled with consumers understanding their responsibility and the availability of digitised music, we will have our entire infrastructure and processes in place to take advantage of download sales demand," said Prince. "www.resource.com.au is providing our listeners with a safe, reliable and comprehensive source for all their digital Christian music needs today at $1.99 per track."

Prince is promoting the new music medium to the company's existing end-user customers via email, advertising and Simcast broadcasting - alert messages which keep the recipient instantly updated with the latest news from Resource Music through alerts appearing on the desktop.