Gospel and Christian music stations are among the most numerous in any radio directory and among the least differentiated by their tags. The useful distinctions are between traditional gospel, rooted in the African-American church and built on choir and lead-vocal interplay; contemporary Christian music, which is stylistically pop-rock with devotional lyrics; and teaching stations, which are predominantly speech with music between blocks.
These serve quite different purposes and it is easy to arrive at one expecting another. Teaching stations in particular can look like music stations in a directory listing while broadcasting almost no music at all.
Traditional gospel is one of the most demanding genres for stream quality, because massed choir voices occupy a wide band and a full choir at low bitrate collapses into a blur. Speech-led teaching stations, by contrast, are perfectly usable at 32 to 48 kbps and are a sensible choice on a metered connection.
