| Attendance significantly down for GMA Music Week |
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| Written by Cameron Conant | |
| Monday, 08 June 2009 01:16 PM America/New_York | |
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But retailers and music professionals had ‘sense of camaraderie’ at annual Nashville gathering
Despite efforts to attract attendees by lowering registration rates and offering seminars on financial management to address an unstable music environment, attendance was significantly down at this year’s Gospel Music Association (GMA) Music Week. But the annual gathering was “very beneficial” for retailers and music professionals, GMA officials said. Held April 18-22 and culminating with the 40th Annual GMA Dove Awards in Nashville, the five-day festival—part industry convention, part celebration of Christian music—had a 30% decrease in turnout from 2008, although the event still attracted more than 2,000 people. |
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THANK-YOU CAMPAIGN: Jill and Randy King (center), owners of Kings Christian Bookstore in Boone, Iowa, presented a thank-you card with more than 200 signatures from local residents in late March to Boone Fire Chief Ed Knight. The couple, who opened their 2,000-square-foot store last June, encouraged people to visit their store to sign the card for the Boone firefighters to show appreciation for their efforts in a Feb. 3 fire that destroyed three downtown businesses. Randy King was a volunteer firefighter for 10 years as well as a paramedic for a local hospital for 10 years. “Many people who had never been in the store ... came in specifically to sign the card,” Jill King told Christian Retailing. “People from neighboring towns came in and signed the card. ... Fire departments from other towns also came to help.” 
That’s the concern of CBA President Bill Anderson, who said that such a change “can only come as we as publishers and record companies and gift manufacturers and retailers give prominence and promotion to that which is sound and solid, refusing to capitulate to the pressure to promote what will sell.
Chuck Wallington, owner of one of the Christian retail industry’s beacon independent stores, has told how help and encouragement from colleagues and competitors has enabled his business to claw its way back from near-financial ruin.
The second annual Christian Small Publisher Book of the Year Awards were recently announced.
Love Takes Wing (Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment/Word Distribution) supplanted Chonda Pierce's Stayin' Alive ... Laughing! by Chonda Pierce (No Whining Productions/Provident-Integrity Distribution) for the top spot on the SoundScan Christian Video list for sales the week ending May 10, while Newsboys' In the Hands of God (Inpop Records/EMI CMG Distribution) replaced Point of Grace's How You Live (Word Records/Word) atop the Christian/Gospel music Christian retail chart.
