When we first launched the new Music Companion website, we included an article on the site that provided important information regarding CCLI (“Christian Copyright Licensing International”). Since then, many of our congregations have requested and obtained a CCLI copyright license. In fact, almost 60 congregations in the USA district now have this license.
There has been some question, however, over whether or not each congregation that currently has a license actually needs the license. Given this, we wanted to take a moment to clarify the reasons why a CCLI copyright license would be needed.
A CCLI copyright license is needed if your congregation does any of the following:
- Copies copyrighted songs from websites, songbooks, or our hymnals for use in congregational singing.
- Prints copyrighted songs, hymns and/or lyrics in bulletins, programs, and/or song sheets for use in congregational singing.
- Electronically stores, retrieves and utilizes copyrighted song files in computers, presentation software and similar resources to enable the visual projection of copyrighted songs onto screens for use in congregational singing.
- Creates overhead transparencies, slides, computer graphics, or any other format whereby copyrighted song lyrics are visually projected for use in congregational singing.
- Arranges, prints, and/or copies member-constructed arrangements (vocal and instrumental) of copyrighted songs for use in congregational singing, where no published version is available.
In short, if your congregation does not display copyrighted lyrics on screens, include copyrighted lyrics in programs/song sheets, or make copies of copyrighted songs (from our hymnals or found online) for use in congregational singing, then a CCLI copyright license would not be needed.
If your congregation has a CCLI license but you now realize it is not needed (or, on the contrary, if you now realize that you need a CCLI license), please let us know by emailing us at Music_Worship@nac-usa.org. Please feel free to email us with any questions you may have as well.
Thank you in advance for passing this information along to the appropriate people within your congregation.