Skip to Content





Home > Music News

TobyMac's "Portable Sounds": Unprecedented Radio Play, Sales, Tour Success New Video Contest For Fans To Launch This Week

Nashville, TN....April 19, 2007.....As pioneering artist TobyMac’s new hit record “Portable Sounds” continues its incredible sales trek with 70% ahead of his 2004 Gold-certified, Dove Award winning and GRAMMY ® nominated project, “Welcome To Diverse City,” TobyMac is also seeing unprecedented support from radio and fans across the country on his “Portable Sounds” tour. In addition, his retail single for “Made to Love” continues to land in the top 15 of the Billboard Top 100 Singles Sales chart, this week in at No. 11 after 15 weeks on the chart.

After holding strong for 9 straight weeks at No. 1 on R&R’s Christian CHR chart, TobyMac is also feeling the love from Christian AC radio for the first time in his solo career with “Made to Love,” which this week hits No. 2 on R&R’s Christian AC Monitored radio chart.

Capacity crowds in Kansas City, Rockford, Toledo and the largest group of the tour so far in Lynchburg, VA, have been getting a live taste of the February 20th release from TobyMac as the “Portable Sounds” tour kicked off March 15th featuring the hot line-up of Thousand Foot Krutch, Building 429, and Family Force 5. With all three acts releasing new music in 2007, the “Portable Sounds” tour is bringing a fresh new sound to 19 cities across the U.S..

To keep the momentum going strong, Forefront Records is orchestrating a tobyMac fan video contest in which fans will create a video for a song from “Portable Sounds.” The winning video will be premiered on the JumboTron before Toby’s set at Creation Festival Northwest on July 28. The winner will receive a trip for two to Creation NW to meet Toby and see the video premiere and other prizes (detailed on the next page). Three honorable mentions will receive a 30GB iPod and an autographed copy of “Portable Sounds.”

Sponsored by Forefront, Creation Festival, MonsterPod and Hearitfirst.com, contestants can enter starting April 25th through June 6th at Hearitfirst.com and can use one of three TobyMac “Portable Sounds” songs: “I’m for You,” “Boomin’” or “Ignition.” The top 10 finalists will have their videos put up at Hearitfirst.com where fans will be able to vote to choose a final winner, which will be announced in late July when the video premieres before Toby’s set at Creation Northwest as well as on HearItFirst.com. For contest details go to: http://www.hearitfirst.com/tobymac.

“Portable Sounds” debuted on the Billboard Top 200 chart at No. 10 and No. 1 on SoundScan Contemporary Christian Overall chart, marking this his highest solo career debut selling 50,645 units. Ringing true to the title and TobyMac’s intent on making this project “portable” for the masses, 14 % of street week numbers were from digital sales landing at No. 4 on the Billboard Digital Sales chart. Also during street week, “Portable Sounds” broke into the Top 10 overall albums on iTunes. Prior to street week, TobyMac’s retail single “Made to Love” debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot Singles chart and remains in the Top 5. This single also topped the SoundScan Christian Digital Track chart.

TobyMac released his solo debut (Momentum 2001) followed by the critically acclaimed Welcome to Diverse City (2004), which both releases received GRAMMY nominations, and most recently both were awarded RIAA Gold Certification last month. TobyMac is a founding member of the GRAMMY Award winning and best-selling group (over 8 million albums sold) in Christian music, dc talk. He is the founder of Gotee Records and co-founder of the E.R.A.C.E. Foundation (Eliminating Racism and Creating Equality) in Franklin, TN. Recently TobyMac was honored with the “Artist of the Year” nomination for the 38th Annual GMA Dove Awards, which will be held on April 25, 2007.