Some of you guys have inquired in the past about why we don't simply send out mp3s for everyone on the team when it comes to learning new songs. Obviously, the world of ipods and mp3 players is where most of us live, but simply sending out mp3s like that is not only difficult, it's actually illegal. So, we've opted for the Planning Center route. Those of you who are veterans of our worship team are no stranger to PC. Others of you are possibly just now learning to navigate it. At any rate, I know it's not the most ideal thing to simply sit and learn a song while streaming, but it's perhaps the best way we know of, short of downloading the song for yourself and paying the artist his dues (which I hope that alot of you will opt to do anyway).
For you church planters out there, here's a little info regarding mp3 dissemination that might help you in the future with your worship teams. I stole the majority of this from Bob Kauflin's blog, worshipmatters.com, which is a great resource for stuff like this, and I hope you'll take advantage of it.
You have several options when it comes to getting music to your people:
- You can gift a song to multiple people on iTunes. If your team is small enough, and you have the budget, this is a great way to get tunes to your people. At Journey, because we already pay for PC, we haven't had to go this route.
- We put all of our chord charts and mp3s on Planning Center. I've already mentioned this, but PC is a great resource for your team. With the general copyright license of PC, your team is legally allowed to stream copyrighted songs so long as they have an internet connection. It also gives you the option to place links within the song to pertinent videos on YouTube or links to iTunes, etc.
- Both Kauflin's team and Journey's team follow a similar method of teaching new songs to the rest of their team. Usually one group of musicians will learn the new song and teach it to the church. The tech team then records the live arrangement and then uploads them to PC for future musicians to have for the following week or whenever they need it.
- (Based on Kauflin's research) Here’s the rights you have for CCLI songs. The terms (1.1.e and 1.2.b) gives you the right to record the songs in your service, and you can make duplications not to exceed 15% of your church attendance. So for most worship teams it’s totally legal, as long as you’re working with CCLI songs and you’re not making zillions of copies. Except in the case of church plants where the worship team is like half the congregation.
Well, there you have it. I hope that this helps at least somewhat understand the method behind our madness. Have a great weekend, everybody. And I hope to see you this Sunday at Journey.
