In the second part of our new series on the financial infrastructure of British Christian music, Tony Cummings interviews Alliance Music's Marketing Director Dave Withers.

Dave: "We did approach them but they had set up a unique system, which is very successful and really and truthfully I don't think that there was a great deal we could offer them as a record company that they didn't already have. They were quite content with their situation. They then were able to, as far as the chart thing was concerned, employ a company like Total to do the distribution and the marketing for them. with the resources they had accumulated down the years by being independent. What they have to do I think is probably work a lot harder than most bands 'cause you've got to do everything from writing songs to manufacturing albums to marketing them. There's a lot of hard work in there. But they do extremely well. But then they are obviously only focusing on one band and a very narrow range of products."

Tony: Christian record companies sometimes seem to fling out an awful lot of releases. Does Alliance have a ceiling?

Dave: "We do but as a rule it gets broken. Our ceiling is 12 but in the last 12 months we've averaged less than that and we probably release fewer than some others. Having said that every now and again you get a bit of a peak and a trough. We probably release albums that barely merit it but sometimes there's an expectation that if we are truly to represent some of the American companies that we do our best and speculate on some in an effort to develop new acts. It's important that we continue to do that, not just go with the As and the B list, but to look at the C and the D lists as well to see what we can do, what we can develop. So sometimes stuff gets in the market which may or may not work and if it doesn't work then people may argue, 'you shouldn't have released that and they are right, in hindsight. But there is other stuff we release which is a success."

Tony: So what's a success? What would a top selling CCM album sell in the UK?

Dave: "Iona is our top seller. On 'Journey Into The Morn', which has been around for 18 months or so, I think that is probably up at around 30, 32 thousand. Overall, it's well over 60,000 with international sales. But, of course, there is only one Iona. Others sell less than that. Yes, it's a big sell and you have to work very hard to achieve that, but so do Iona. An album lives and dies on its merits at the end of the day and they put out phenomenally good albums and have just built up and built up this following that makes it easier to hit the core market, then you can push it a littler further and get into more peripheral markets as time goes by."

Tony: Presumably, at the other end of the sales figures you release albums by obscure American artists, who've never been to the UK and have no following as yet, which sell hundreds.

Dave: "Yes, you're right. We could sell as little as 250 on a record and When you have gone and manufactured 350 as a minimum, records get thrown away."

Tony: Isn't it a little like throwing mud at the wall to see if it sticks?

Dave: "Yes, we confess that we do do that - there is mud at the wall and it happens. Sometimes it's stuff that you do because you feel that there's an expectation on you to do it and it's part of a bigger picture and other times it's because you think there's something special about this, this may catch on, let's see if we get a reaction to it. The difficulty is, you've got an artist that nobody has ever heard of, nobody has ever heard the sounds and you can take space ads and say this is a great record, listen to it but it's like trying to explain the colour red to a blind man, trying to explain music in words."

Tony: But things could change once national Christian music radio is established in the UK.

Dave: "Yes, absolutely. The radio thing is quite key really. There is a combination of I) getting the radio and that puts the horse in place, and the next thing to put the cart in place is to get the listeners. I think we need to work with radio and say what can we do together to make these things happen, to really publicise. It's good to have programmes like the Alpha Zone on Channel 5 and First Light on the BBC. Those things have been very helpful; we've got a lot of response to those. The viewing figures for the Alpha Zone were a hundred thousand and First Light is about a quarter of a million, so we're still scratching the surface. But it's still significant numbers, no magazine reaches that."

Tony: A continuing criticism of the big Christian record companies is that they aren't interested in the grassroots. What would it take for an unknown artist to get signed to Alliance?

Dave: "There's a number of criteria. First of all, you've got to have a group that's got passion for their message. They've got to have some sort of uniqueness, some sort of individuality, they've got to be talented, they've got to be able to play their instruments and sing. And we feel it's important that they are established as a part of their local church either as individuals or collectively as a group, if they're a group, so they have the covering or the blessing of their church leaders, so they have people praying for them and supporting them. When those criteria are in place and they are out there doing stuff, getting gigs and all the rest of it, they tend then to establish themselves to a great degree. Examples of that would be bands like the World Wide Message Tribe and Delirious?. We are looking at a band now who are working under the covering of the NGM movement called Bleach which is a fantastic Britpoppish band who are writing great songs. They've got very talented people, they've got a passion for their message and they've got spiritual covering and a support base. At the end of the day we are just a record company. We can't really define their ministry, we can't be pastor. We can help but we're not their pastor or spiritual mentor. We just make CDs and sell them."

Tony: It seems that the hardest sales to achieve are the first 1,000 copies. In nearly every case in the last few years UK artists have bad to achieve those sales themselves with a private release.