This holiday season, The Mormon Tabernacle Choir is giving a special gift to its fans around the world. Continuing through Dec. 25, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is offering a 24/7 commercial-free, no cost Christmas music stream at mormontabernaclechoir.org/listen-to-music. The special screening began on Dec. 11.
“Mormon Tabernacle Choir music has long been a part of people’s Christmas traditions,” said Christian Lambert, the producer of digital channels for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. “This new 24/7 live Christmas music stream will make it easy and convenient for today’s families to listen to the Choir’s music in a way familiar to them. And it will reach across international boundaries to countries around the world so no matter where fans live, the music of the Choir can speak to them, especially at Christmas.”
This is the first time the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square have made the Christmas music from their albums available online in a continuous rotation. In addition, every night at 8 p.m. (Mountain Standard Time) the 24/7 stream will feature one of the Choir’s iconic Christmas concerts from 2001 to 2012 with performers such as Angela Lansbury, David Archuleta, Tom Brokaw, Jane Seymour, Alfie Boe and David McCullough. Christmas episodes of Music and the Spoken Word will also stream at 6 a.m., noon and 6 p.m. (Mountain Standard Time) each day.
“The Choir’s goal is to share uplifting music of joy, peace and hope to its listeners,” said Ed Payne, producer for the Choir. “We encourage families to make listening to the 24/7 stream of Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s Christmas music a part of a new holiday tradition as they celebrate the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ.”
The 24/7 stream is another way for the choir to reach out to fans in a digital format. Previous digital methods include a website, sacred music library featuring its live performances, an extensive YouTube channel, Facebook page and presence on Twitter and Pinterest. It’s also important for fans to note that there is exclusive content available in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir archives. People can gain access to the archive by subscribing to the Choir’s free weekly newsletter at mormontabernaclechoir.org/contact.
“We updated our website a year ago, and we did some testing and found out that about 44 percent of the people who were coming to the website were looking for a way to listen to music,” said Brother Lambert, explaining the origin of the stream. “People wanted to turn on music to listen to while they got ready for church or when cleaning the house. People were also looking for an individual song to share with friends or use in a lesson. At the time, there wasn’t a way of doing any of those things. So we developed a 24/7 live stream as well as the sacred music library that contains music from general conference and the Christmas devotional. People can download and listen to music as they want to.”
In fact, Brother Lambert said it was the response to the Choir’s 24/7 streams that inspired the creation of the Christmas 24/7 stream. His favorite social media comment from a listener said, “Music transports the gospel to my soul like nothing else. I have so much appreciation for the remarkable effort that goes into providing this spiritual medium.”
“We really enjoy hearing from our fans on social media, and we listen to their feedback,” Brother Payne said. “We hope people will make the music stream the soundtrack for their holiday season.”
