Songwriter FAQ questions:

1. What is Free Praise And Worship all about?
2. What is CCLI?
3. Why should I submit my songs to the Free Praise And Worship database?
4. What about copyrights and CCLI licenses?
5. What's in it for me?
6. Can I remove or change my songs later?
7. How I do submit my songs to Free Praise And Worship?
8. Why can't you just link to my site?


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Songwriter FAQ answers:

1. What is Free Praise And Worship all about.
Just as the commercial music industry is rethinking the way that it distributes  music, and taking up the opportunities afforded by the Internet, Free Praise and  Worship aims to provide a vehicle that uses the most up to date and efficient technology for getting worship music into the hands of the people who will use it for God's glory.

For a more detailed answer, see our mission statement.

2. What is CCLI?
Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI) has created a very efficient, low cost system that gives churches a very liberal license to copy and use copyrighted material while still protecting, and providing income for the song owner.

Rather than making churches purchase enough copies of every song that they wish to use, a CCLI Photocopying License allows a church to make copies of songs. The details of these copies are recorded and forwarded to CCLI twice a  year and the income from the CCLI licenses is then distributed amongst the song  owners who have registered their music in proportion to the usage of their songs (approx $US2-5 per registration). We hope that, by using the CCLI system, song  owners will receive an income from the use of their songs which will help them continue to write songs for God's glory.

For more information visit the CCLI website.

3. Why should I submit my songs to the Free Praise And Worship database?
We hope that the main reason would be that you want to share what God has given you with as many people as possible ("Free you have received, freely give." Matt  10:8).

In addition, you may think of Free Praise and Worship as a "distribution channel" or "publisher" for your songs - essentially a way of getting the music "out there" in a cost effective manner.

We believe that the web holds the promise of being a very efficient channel  and that Free Praise and Worship provides a "WIN -WIN" arrangement for songwriters and churches

The churches get interesting, fresh music without having to buy CD's or  songbooks. The songwriters get more reported use of their songs to CCLI and exposure to more people, promoting the possible purchase of commercial  recordings.

4. What about copyrights and CCLI licenses?
The Free Praise And Worship Terms and Conditions affirm your rights and make it clear that users of your songs shall report usage  to CCLI. Worship leaders can use the SetBuilder program to track their usage of songs and generate usage reports ready to simply to print out send to CCLI.

5. What's in it for me?
See # 3

6. Can I remove or change my songs later?
 Yes. You can change or update a song very easily. Just do a search for the song.  In the results page you will see an asterisk (*) next to the author's name.  Click on the asterisk to edit the submission. Your changes will only be saved if you supply the same user ID (email) and password that was originally used to submit the song.  You have a song removed by simply sending an Email and  requesting it.

7. How I do submit my songs to Free Praise And Worship?
There are four ways to have your songs distributed through Free Praise And Worship.

8. Why can't you just link to my site.
Part of our goal is to build a common repository where worship leaders can have  access to all songs that they could want for any worship service. The search engine and SetBuilder tools will continue to be enhanced and many of the features in those tools require control over the files. To enable a worship  leader searching for songs to find a song on a particular topic, the site's search engine requires the text files to be on our server. Also, if the search engine showed a link to a file on your site and then you renamed it, we would  have a broken link. The SetBuilder allows downloading for later off-line viewing. From a programming standpoint, that is much easier to accomplish when the files are all on the same server.

If you submit your songs, we will provide a link back to your site, which  that we believe will increase traffic to your site. Whenever a user clicks on  the name of an author, they are given the contact email and web address that you supply during registration.