We're building a collection of free modern worship music ​

Be part of it! ​

We are in the process of building a collection of worship songs that are:

1. Designed for congregational singing
2. Faithful to Scripture
3. Modern
4. Free

Why is this needed? ​

Up till now, churches have been limited to either singing old hymns or paying for licenses to sing modern worship music. For most churches that has not really been a choice. Almost all modern music is copyrighted and churches that don't want to be left in the past have had no choice but to pay royalties each year for the privilege of worshipping God through modern song.

There are several problems with this:

1. It creates a barrier to worship — Churches must pay hundreds and/or thousands of dollars and navigate copyright, licensing, and reporting requirements, to avoid worshipping God illegally.
2. Global allocation of funding — The Christian music industry receives billions of dollars and has created over half a million songs (of which most churches will use less than 100/year), while many parts of the world remain unreached and without Scripture in their own language.
3. Funding problematic ministries — Some of the most popular songs are owned by churches with problematic beliefs and/or practices, and get much of their wealth from other churches through song royalties.
4. Lack of accountability — The main licensing facilitator (CCLI) is a private for-profit company that doesn't publicly release financial statements, and many artists are for-profit as well with no limitations on how much they can earn for a single song.
5. Scripture condemns commercializing ministry — Jesus commanded his followers to "freely give" (Matt 10:8) and his anger at commerce happening in a place of worship (John 2:16) shows just how seriously he takes the matter.

We believe churches should have the right to sing to God without restriction, and to be able to do so with modern music. So we're partnering with a new generation of musicians who freely give their music, rather than commercialize it.

But artists deserve compensation... ​

Yes, we greatly encourage financially supporting artists so they can give their music to the church for free. We are not opposed to biblical funding of ministry, but that is very different to selling it.

Access the collection ​

The collection is in progress. Once we have a significant amount of songs available, we'll announce the collection as being ready to use.

Who can contribute ​

We welcome all artists, regardless if you have ever had a song published or not. As long as you own the rights to the song, you can submit it to our collection.

While we are primarily seeking congregational songs, you are welcome to submit other music too. But all music must be faithful to Scripture (not contradictory or confusing).

You'll need to ensure you own the rights and have already freed the song from copyright restrictions.

What we need ​

To serve churches, you should supply as much of this as possible:

• Information (title, authors, year, language)
• Lyrics and chords (preferably in this format)
• Instrumental recording (FLAC preferred)
• Performance recording (FLAC preferred)

Promoting the song ​

In order to promote the song it is highly advantageous to also submit a lyrics video and/or a video of the song being performed. This could simply be performed by your church band, but it must look and sound decent.

Regarding rights ​

You must own the rights to a song (both lyrics and music) to be able to free it from copyright restrictions, so we can add it to our collection.

Brand new songs ​

If you created a song that hasn't been published yet, then you can free it yourself and submit it to us.

Already published songs ​

If you have already published your song then you'll need to consult the legal agreement with your publisher as to whether they have exclusive publishing rights and what you might need to do to be able to dedicate it to the public domain.

Multiple artists ​

If you are not the sole creator of a song then you'll also need to get the permission of the other authors to be able to free your song. If you have changed the lyrics and/or music of an existing song, then it will depend on the copyright status of that song.