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Music is core to Americans’ experiences with religious programming. Around four-in-ten U.S. adults (37%) say they ever listen to religious music. And music of some kind occupies around half of all airtime on religious radio across the United States.
To determine what music is played most often on religious radio, we randomly collected more than 300,000 songs played on religious stations in July 2025. We then used the AudD music recognition API to identify those songs, their artists and the musical genres those artists are affiliated with. (We use the word “artists” throughout this analysis to refer to both individual recording artists as well as bands or ensembles.)
On one level, music on religious radio is quite diverse. Nearly 14,000 artists appeared in our sample of 300,000 songs, reflecting a range of Christian (and some non-Christian) music genres.
At the same time, religious radio airplay favors a relatively small set of genres and artists. The average listener is much more likely to hear artists who play contemporary Christian music (CCM) or worship music than they are to hear artists of other genres. And 16% of all songs we collected were by just 10 artists.
These findings are part of a larger study on religious radio in the U.S.
Most common music genres
The vast majority of the music that plays on U.S. religious radio can be identified as Christian music of some kind (88%).
“Religious Radio Across America”
| Genre | Share of songs | group |
|---|---|---|
| All Christian music | 88% | 1 |
| Non-Christian music | 4% | 1 |
| Contemporary Christian music | 68% | 2 |
| Worship | 63% | 2 |
| Pop | 42% | 2 |
| Gospel | 27% | 2 |
| Country | 21% | 2 |
| Rock | 19% | 2 |
| Alternative | 15% | 2 |
| R&B/Hip-hop | 6% | 2 |
| Folk | 5% | 2 |
| Other | 3% | 2 |
“Religious Radio Across America”
Just 4% of songs could be identified as non-Christian music. (We couldn’t collect genre information for the remaining 8%.)
Stylistically, about two-thirds of these songs are by artists who play contemporary Christian music. A similar share are by artists who play worship music.
Other genres that appear often on religious radio include:
- Pop (42% of tracks are by artists tagged as pop)
- Gospel (27%)
- Country (21%)
- Rock (19%)
- Alternative (15%)
The vast majority of the artists who play on religious radio perform in multiple genres, with CCM/worship and CCM/pop being the two most common combinations.
For the most part, religious stations across the country tend to play similar types of music. However, stations in the South play a larger share of songs by gospel artists (41% of all song plays vs. 20% across other regions) and Christian country artists (30% vs. 17%). Southern stations play correspondingly less worship, pop and rock music than stations elsewhere.
Artists who receive the most airtime
The 300,000 songs we collected for this analysis came from about 14,000 different artists. But despite that overall variety, religious radio stations tend to devote most of their music airtime to a relatively small number of popular performers.
Just 10 artists accounted for 16% of all songs played on religious radio during the month we studied. This list includes contemporary Christian artists like Phil Wickham, Matthew West and the band MercyMe. Wickham, who claimed more airtime than any other artist in July 2025 (about 2.5% of all song plays), had two tracks that appeared on the weekly Billboard Christian Airplay chart during that month.
The top 10 artists on religious radio by airtime are largely long-standing figures in Christian music. All but one have been releasing music since before 2010, and several have careers stretching back into the 1990s or earlier.
Beyond these 10 artists:
- The top 1% of artists by airtime accounted for 57% of song plays.
- The top 10% of artists accounted for 87% of song plays.
Meanwhile, the remaining 90% of artists together accounted for just 13% of songs plays in July 2025.
Times of day religious radio stations play music
Looking at U.S. religious radio stations collectively, music takes up 52% of all programming time. But there is some variation in how much music the average listener might hear depending on the time of day they tune in. Music is most prevalent during the evening time slot – 7 p.m. to midnight – accounting for 60% of overall broadcast time. And it is least prevalent during the morning drive time slot – 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. – when it occupies 47% of broadcast time.
However, not all religious radio stations play the same broad content mix. Similar shares of stations play mostly music (37%), mostly talk programming (35%) or a more even mix of talk and music (28%).
- Among stations that play mostly talk, music takes up 8% to 12% of broadcast time across every major time slot in the typical 24-hour day.
- Conversely, among stations that play mostly music, it occupies 85% of broadcast time or more during every time slot.
Stations that play a more equal mix of talk and music tend to air music and talk programming in roughly equal measures throughout the daytime. But the share of their broadcast time dedicated to music becomes substantially higher in the evening, rising to 71% between 7 p.m. and midnight.
