The Christian Music World Now Has Its Own Streaming Service

Are you a big fan of Christian and gospel music, but you aren’t able to find a lot of it on whatever service you use to access music? Well, the time has come, and now there is a streaming offering just for you. New streaming app The Overflow is working on becoming the first company that focuses solely on Christian music in the streaming world.

“I believe Christian music fans have unmet needs and I see a gap in the marketplace” said co-founder Stephen Relph.

Subscriptions to streaming music are already pretty cheap, especially when you consider what you’re getting for your money. $10 to listen to as much music as you can fit into a month? That’s not too shabby, but The Overflow is trying to do consumers one better. The fledgling company is charging just $4.99 per month for unlimited streaming—half of what a premium subscription to Spotify costs.

Where other companies like Spotify or Pandora can have the rights to play tens of millions of tracks, The Overflow isn’t trying to compete with a larger library, but rather a much more focused one. So far, the company claims to only have just under 400,000 songs in their queue—less than two percent of the collections controlled by their more popular competition.

If you give people too many choices, a lot of great music gets shut out. Most of the biggest sites promote new releases and hits by the world’s most popular artists, most of whom fit into the pop, rock, country, or rap categories. There are plenty of genres that simply don’t win out, unless they are separated and given their own space. The same idea has been used with every business that touches the music world. There are specialized radio stations, blogs, magazines, and record stores (or, there were).

Those working on the service clearly know their stuff, as the app is not a free-for-all. There are curated playlists, and suggestions about what artist, album, or genre to listen to next, all in the Christian and gospel realms.

“Treating Christian as a genre is also a bit of a misstep—Christian is really more of a lifestyle composed of numerous sub genres” Relph suggested, proving that to work in the “genre”, you truly have to know it.

The company is also always looking for artists they may be missing. In an attempt to have as much music available as is appropriate for the service, The Overflow’s website has a space where musicians can submit their work to be included in the offerings. Right now The Overflow is only an app, but the company is working on creating a version that can be used on people’s computers by this spring.