What sold and why: lessons from a former Deseret Book music buyer
When former Deseret Book music buyer Jared Hansen looks back across fifteen years of selecting titles for the company's retail shelves, he remembers the first question he asked every supplier: who is the family at home singing this on a Sunday evening? That single framing shaped thousands of buying decisions for hymnals, EFY soundtracks, piano collections, and the occasional Nashville surprise with Latter-day Saint roots. His story offers a rare window into how a niche religious publisher and retailer decided what deserved shelf space.
Deseret Book's music division operated at the intersection of faith, family, and the practical realities of a small consumer base. The catalog served Latter-day Saint households across Utah, but also smaller clusters of members in places as far away as Auckland, Suva, and the Sydney and Melbourne stakes in Australia, where dedicated members drove demand for English-language hymnals and sheet music despite shipping costs.
For Hansen, every quarterly buying meeting was a balance between devotional content and commercial sense. A new arrangement of a familiar hymn might move modest units for years, while a youth-focused album tied to a single EFY year could spike hard and disappear within twelve months. Understanding which titles would anchor the catalog became the central art of the role.
The Australian connection matters here because it illustrates how a Utah-headquartered buyer thought about distant markets. Buyers like Hansen watched shipping manifests to Brisbane and Perth to gauge whether a particular product was reaching members beyond the Wasatch Front, and those numbers quietly influenced which artists received reorder support in subsequent seasons.
A buyer's role behind the catalog
Hansen joined Deseret Book's buying team in the late 1990s after several years in general Christian retail, and he quickly realised that LDS music operated by its own commercial logic. Unlike the broader CCM market chasing radio hits, this audience wanted music that reinforced Sunday worship, supported youth gatherings, and helped parents introduce children to the hymnal. The buyer therefore acted less like a trend-watcher and more like a music minister with a P&L.
He worked closely with the in-house recording label, reviewing demo submissions from independent artists and negotiating co-ventures with larger Nashville producers. Return rates mattered enormously, because printed sheet music returns can quickly erode margin. Hansen remembers one collection of intermediate piano arrangements that sold steadily for nearly a decade simply because church pianists across small wards in Calgary, Hamilton, and Adelaide kept reordering.
Hymnals and piano arrangements held the line
If there was one safe harbour in the catalog, it was the hymnal itself and its companion printed materials. The 1985 English Hymnal remained the bedrock, but supplementary songbooks and simplified piano arrangements kept generating reliable revenue. Hansen notes that titles like the LDS Children's Songbook and dedicated piano folios often outperformed contemporary albums in per-store sales.
Arrangements of familiar tunes also benefited from patriotic surges around significant civic moments, where pieces such as the well-loved hymn spotlight on the hymn Praise to the Man saw fresh interest from choir directors assembling July programmes.
Hansen also pushed for stronger ukulele-friendly arrangements as the instrument's popularity surged in family living rooms. He wishes the catalog had embraced that movement earlier, perhaps with a beginner-friendly resource like a beginner's guide to playing LDS hymns on the ukulele that might have reached a younger cohort of home musicians.
EFY albums drove the youth market
EFY, or Especially for Youth, generated some of the most distinctive sales spikes in the catalog. Each summer's soundtrack was effectively a one-shot product, tied to a conference theme and a fresh roster of songs. Buyers had to forecast demand months ahead, knowing ward leaders would bulk-order copies for road-trip buses and participants would buy the album as a keepsake.
Australian members never attended EFY in person, but they experienced the same music through sister events organised by Sydney-based stake youth committees and gatherings in Brisbane. Those events drove demand for the official EFY CDs, often ordered through family members travelling through Salt Lake City.
The flip side, Hansen recalls, was the steep return rate when a particular EFY album underperformed the conference's emotional peak. A lukewarm soundtrack could leave the buyer with pallets of unsold stock by October, a hard lesson in the limits of brand-driven music retail.
Seasonal peaks followed an unusual calendar
Because Deseret Book's retail calendar followed the American civic and religious rhythm, Australian shoppers were buying Christmas music in their hottest months. July's Independence Day-themed choir arrangements reached Australian carts, while January's Australia Day brought no patriotic hymn surge on local shelves.
This inverted calendar shaped how the buyer managed inventory. Pre-orders for Christmas albums closed in late summer in the Northern Hemisphere but needed to reach Australian members by their late November mailing window, a logistics puzzle that often caught new assistants off guard.
Easter, by contrast, behaved consistently across hemispheres, with both Northern and Southern congregations observing the holiday within weeks. Lenten albums and reverent solo collections saw the most predictable international sales curves of any seasonal category.
Digital was a slow pivot, not a revolution
The transition from CD to MP3 album happened gradually in this market, and not always in the direction the industry predicted. Hansen remembers expecting digital sales to cannibalise physical almost immediately, but the reality proved messier. Many older members preferred the tangible CD for the car, while younger purchasers gravitated toward MP3 bundles for mission preparation.
Songbooks and printed arrangements resisted digital substitution almost entirely. A pianist could not swipe through a hymnal on a tablet and still keep both hands free, and family song leaders preferred printed pages to share around the piano bench. Digital formats complemented the catalog rather than replacing it.
The buyer therefore treated digital as a parallel channel rather than a replacement. MP3 albums were added to the online store, but the buying decisions for physical hymnals continued to follow the same careful, slow logic that had always defined the role.
Lessons for today's independent music sellers
For independent retailers stepping into the space once dominated by Deseret Book's music arm, Hansen's experience offers several durable principles. Curation still matters more than volume, and a small catalog of well-chosen hymnals, EFY-adjacent youth albums, and family-friendly piano arrangements will outperform a sprawling list of forgettable titles. Listening to ward music directors and family-home evening leaders will surface product needs that sales data alone will never reveal.
Hansen now consults for smaller online retailers and points curious visitors toward our catalog story when they ask how a focused store can survive in a streaming era. He believes the market remains strong for retailers who treat hymnody as much a calling as a business.
Buying principles that traveled well
- Anchor the catalog with hymnals and songbooks before adding novelty titles.
- Plan EFY releases twelve months ahead and honour return windows for underperforming soundtracks.
- Treat patriotic surges as short, predictable windows and stock conservatively.
- Offer piano arrangements at multiple difficulty levels to reach ward musicians across ages.
- Build digital and physical channels as complementary rather than competing inventory.
Adjustments for Australian audiences
- Order Christmas titles early enough for late-November arrival by international post.
- Skip patriotic tie-ins around Australia Day and lean on Easter and Christmas instead.
- Bundle printed sheet music with beginner guides for family musicians in smaller stakes.
- Keep physical CDs available for older members who rarely switch to digital downloads.
| Format | Peak Era | Key Strength | Main Weakness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hymnals and songbooks | 1980s–1990s | Long shelf life, steady reorders | Heavy to ship, slow turnover |
| EFY soundtracks | 2000s | Annual youth-driven spike | High return risk when themes miss |
| Piano sheet music | 1990s–2010s | Reliable ward pianist demand | Returns can erode margin quickly |
| MP3 albums | 2010s | Reaches mission-bound members | Lower per-unit revenue |
| DVD concert films | 2000s | Strong gift-season sales | Limited long-term replay value |