The birth of the WOW record project can be traced to Grant Cunningham, A&R Director at Sparrow Records. In November 1994, Cunningham made a business trip to EMI Limited in London, which at the time was the parent company of Sparrow Records. There, he noticed that several British record labels were issuing an annual CD of top-rated songs, known as the
NOW series, containing collections of pop songs. Cunningham brought the idea back to Sparrow. Sparrow executives suggested a similar project be developed for Christian pop music and he was assigned the task of getting the project off the ground. Released in late 1995,
WOW 1996 was the first in the WOW Series and the first recording put together by the three major Christian
record companies of the time:
Word Records (now
Word Entertainment),
Sparrow Records (formerly part of
EMI Christian Music Group), and
Reunion Records (now part of
Sony's
Provident Label Group). Still today, after each submitting label agrees to a reduced master royalty, the final decision on the tracks to be included is made by committee. Production, marketing, and distribution for the "WOW Hits" series was handled by EMI Christian Music Group, and from 2013, by Capitol Christian Music Group, which is now a
Universal Music Group company. In 1999, the annual
WOW Worship series was launched. Rather than using the year, each release is identified by the color of the cover. The worship series and hits series are today among the best-selling members of the product brand. Beginning in 2008, WOW began releasing separate single-disc collections spread throughout each year, rather than a two-disc collection toward the end of each year. In addition to
WOW Hits, which focuses on the most popular pop and pop-rock music, plans call for either single-disc
WOW Rock Hits and
WOW Pop Hits collections released twice a year. ==Released annually==