Once upon a time way back in the early days of NOW Church, I can remember our worship team using a four-track recorder as a way of multi-tracking original songs they were developing. This was an upgrade from our cassette recorder days, yet a world away from the processing power we have today. We never dreamed that nearly 30 years later, we’d not only be able to track up to 64-channels of crystal clear digital audio during each and every worship experience, but release original music recorded live and in-house on our own Avid Protools rig, not to mention also being able to release singles and albums so they can be streamed and downloaded literally around the world in seconds!
I remember researching nearly two decades ago what churches were spending to record a CD; as my church was interested in producing a live record. With he process of hiring a mobile truck and crew to track out and record, plus all of the post-production, mixing and mastering that went into it, it was not uncommon to drop $25,000 or more on a project. Many churches would never recoup that kind of investment through album sales.