Christian Music News

Dave Maurer hopes to protect Christian music heritage from throwaway culture

Music is something that should be preserved — that is the philosophy behind the Christian Music Archive, a website founded more than a decade ago by Newberg resident Dave Maurer, who still runs it.

“In this day and age, we’re all about throwaway stuff,” he said. “We just consume, consume and don’t look back. But there is a lot of rich history and culture in the people of yesteryear, and I think there needs to be places where we keep all that so it’s not lost.”

In Maurer’s opinion, the need for preservation is particularly keen in the realm of Christian and inspirational music — which hold special and personal meaning for people who may have had such tunes played during their weddings or were encouraged by them when experiencing a difficult time.

"There are a lot of memories for people connected with these songs,” he said.

Hence, the inspiration behind the archive, a wiki-style website with the lofty goals of being a top stop for fans of Christian music, as well as a storehouse of information. Maurer admits his site is far from the only one on the Internet that does what it does, but he believes there are a couple of aspects that set his apart.

For one thing, while many sites document the big names in the world of contemporary Christian music, Maurer’s site focuses more on the trailblazers, the stars of the 1970s and 1980s whose names today’s fans may have never even heard.

To that end, his site’s entries include “Where are they now?” pages, where fans can read about what projects some of their favorite band’s members are now pursuing, or what their favorite artists turned to after retiring (Maurer said he has learned may Christian musicians go on to careers as pastors). Some of this information comes to the site via other websites, like the artist’s personal pages or social media profiles, while other times, they email Maurer directly with information.

Another aspect unique to the Christian Music Archive is that while most media tend to spotlight only those already in the spotlight, Maurer likes to recognize the unheralded production crew, session musicians and the like.

“I’m a credit reader,” he said. “I like to read about the people behind the scenes.”

His site allows for anyone to edit or add information, provided they complete a free registration on the page. He said he currently has about a dozen regular contributors all over the country, and they — like him — often post about the artists they like the most — the country fans post about country artists, the heavy metal fans post about heavy metal, etc.

Many of his contributors he will never meet — along with the vast majority of his site’s 30,000 unique visitors every month.

“These are people from all over the globe,” he said. “I’ve gotten a bunch of emails that I can’t read and I have to put through Google Translate.”

He’s not sure exactly how many different artists are profiled on the site, but it’s in the thousands.

The site, which underwent a major redesign several years ago, has just begun to generate a modest amount of revenue thanks to hosting Google advertisements as well as partnering with online buy-and-trade record sites and the Amazon and iTunes stores. The income helps cover the cost of hosting the website and developing new features.

With another Newberger, radio producer and fellow Christian music enthusiast Paul Gibson, Maurer has also recently started recording 90-second bios of various artists that are run in syndication on about a dozen stations.

To check out the site, visit www.christianmusicarchive.com.