Provident Distribution and Integrity Music Group, a division of Integrity Media, announced today that they have entered into an agreement to jointly serve the Christian retail market through Provident's distribution organization which will be renamed Provident-Integrity Distribution. The newly named entity will begin distributing releases to the Christian retail market on Jan. 1, 2005.

Integrity-owned and associated labels participating in the agreement include Integrity Music, INO Records, Hosanna! Music, Integrity Gospel, Vertical Music, Integrity Just For Kids and Hillsong Music Australia. In addition, Provident-Integrity Distribution will continue to distribute Provident-owned labels Essential Records, Reunion Records, Beach Street Records, Praise Hymn Soundtracks, Brentwood Music and Benson Records as well as non-owned labels and groups currently distributed by agreement with Provident Distribution.

"This is a giant step forward for our company, and (it) positions Provident-Integrity Distribution to offer more sales representation, better service and combined marketing synergies to the Christian marketplace," said Terry Hemmings, president and CEO of Provident Music Group. "Integrity and INO bring valuable ideas as well as terrific artists and products that will be a great complement to our current roster of owned and distributed labels."

Retailers will receive a letter of instruction in the next few weeks, which will outline the transition process between Word Distribution, who formally distributed Integrity, and Provident-Integrity Distribution.

Concurrent with the announcement of this agreement, Integrity Music Group and Sony-BMG's Epic Records have extended a worldwide arrangement first established in 1997 through which Epic markets and distributes releases from a wide array of Integrity-owned and associated labels to mainstream retail outlets, while Integrity markets and distributes Epic's Christian releases to the Christian marketplace.

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