Gospel music grew faster than nearly every other genre in the U.S. last year. According to Luminate's 2025 Year-End Report, Christian/gospel on-demand audio volume increased 18.5% over the prior year, while overall U.S. on-demand audio streams grew 4.6% during the same period. The genre did not just ride a rising tide. It ran against it.
Feed.fm works with digital businesses to integrate fully licensed music into their apps, and faith-based is one of our most active verticals. When a genre grows this fast, the teams building products for that audience need to know about it, and they need to understand what it means for the music decisions they are making right now.
What's driving the numbers
The artists behind the surge are worth naming because they explain the audience. Forrest Frank, Brandon Lake, and Elevation Worship led contemporary Christian music into territory the genre had not occupied in over a decade. As AP reported, Frank's "Your Way's Better" and Lake's "Hard Fought Hallelujah" charted simultaneously on the Billboard Hot 100, the first time two Christian songs placed on that chart at the same time since 2014. Both songs stayed on the chart for months.
NPR covered the shift as early as mid-year, noting that the contemporary Christian music fanbase driving these numbers skews younger: 60% female, 30% millennial, and heavily streaming-forward. These are not passive listeners. They are discovering gospel music through algorithmic recommendations and social media, not just church.
The result is that new contemporary Christian music outperformed while new music in other genres was down. That divergence matters. It means the gospel music catalog people are streaming is current, not archival.
What this means for faith-based apps
Streaming data reflects listener behavior. When a genre grows 18.5% in a single year, the people building digital products for that audience need to ask whether the music in their app matches what those users are actually streaming.
Over years of working with digital brands across categories, we have seen the same pattern repeat: apps that license the music their users actually listen to outside the app outperform apps that rely on stock libraries or generic catalog. The gap is not about audio quality or production value. It is about whether the music feels familiar. With gospel music growing the way it is, the bar is rising for music in faith-based products specifically. Users who stream Forrest Frank and Brandon Lake on Spotify are going to notice when their prayer app, Bible study platform, or faith community tool plays something that sounds adjacent but is not the real thing.
Billboard's February 2026 report on the Christian music touring boom makes the same point from a live-event angle: the genre is no longer niche demand. Artists like Kirk Franklin, Maverick City Music, and Lauren Daigle are selling out arenas. The fan base is there, and it has expectations.
The licensing piece most teams overlook
The artists driving gospel music's growth, including Frank, Lake, and Elevation Worship, are on major labels. Licensing their music for in-app use is not the same as a Spotify subscription. It requires commercial performance rights, mechanical licenses, and in most cases a distribution agreement with the relevant rights holders.
Most faith-based app teams do not think about this until it becomes a problem, which typically happens at the point of a content audit or a rights-holder inquiry. By then, the app has already built its experience around music it cannot legally use at scale.
Feed.fm handles Christian music licensing for apps directly, with pre-cleared catalogs that include contemporary Christian, gospel, Christian kids, and worship stations. The licensing is built into the integration. Teams get the music their users are already streaming without building a rights management operation from scratch.
Feed.fm can help you with Christian music licensing and more.
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