Background

John J. Thompson founded True Tunes News out of his Wheaton, Illinois

Wheaton, Illinois

Wheaton is an affluent community located in DuPage County, Illinois, approximately west of Chicago and Lake Michigan. Wheaton is the county seat of DuPage County...

 Christian record shop, True Tunes. The store itself, founded in 1989, with Chris Langill, was relatively unique because it focused exclusively on alternative Christian music at a time when Christian bookstores wouldn't carry products based on rock, hip hop, or other hard forms of music. In 1995 Thompson founded a live music club for Christian acts called True Tunes Upstairs. In 1997 the store, magazine, and related assets were bought by the Charlottesville, VA based company Journey Communications. Journey closed the shop in early 1998 citing lagging sales due to the spread of alternative Christian music to larger retailers, and turned operations to the printed magazine and the internet.

Despite competition from CCM

CCM Magazine

CCM Magazine was a monthly magazine published by Salem Publishing, a division of Salem Communications. It was first published in July 1978, and it has always been a Christian music magazine. On January 16, 2008, Salem announced that the April 2008 issue would be the final printed issue of the...

, HM

HM Magazine

HM: The Hard Music Magazine is an American bimonthly publication focusing on both Christianity and hard rock. Articles include news, album and festival reviews, posters, artists to watch, indie artist reviews, devotionals and interviews with Christian artists...

, and 7ball

7ball

7ball was a Christian music magazine, first published in 1995, founded and created by Frank Chimento. They focused on rock, hip-hop, and other "alternative" forms of Christian music. The magazine was initially published by the Royal Magazine Group alongside Release magazine and others...

magazines True Tunes News was extremely successful, achieving a worldwide circulation of 50,000 issues by 1993. This made it the largest Christian rock magazine by circulation, a title it held through the late 1990s. In the late 1990s the magazine ran into financial trouble when several of the record labels whose advertising financed it, went defunct. When it ceased publishing the editors turned to the internet for distribution, but this effort has now been disbanded.