Stryper have made Go Tell It On The Mountain available to stream and download, which is a small thing until you notice what it implies. The Greatest Gift of All, the Christmas album the song comes from, has been sold on physical copies only since it appeared last year on Frontiers.
Holding a whole record off the platforms is now rare enough to be a decision rather than an oversight, and taking one song out of it is the standard way to test whether the decision is still paying. A hymn in December is also the single most streamable thing on a record of this kind, so the track chosen is not an accident either.
Michael Sweet put it in plainer terms. "Go Tell It On The Mountain is a traditional hymn that tells of the birth of Jesus," he said. "Not many have reinterpreted this piece, so it seemed the perfect occasion to add a heavier touch and offer our own version."
The band are Michael Sweet, Robert Sweet and Oz Fox, who founded them, with Perry Richardson on bass. Four decades in, with ten million albums sold, they remain the act that proved a Christian band could work this market at all.