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Is Your Streamed Worship Complying with Church Copyright Laws?

Church Copyright Licenses You Need to Know

“There are basically two main companies that work with the church to provide blanket licenses,” said Lamm. One is Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI), which mainly deals with reproduction. The other is Christian Copyright Solutions (CCS), which primarily deals with performance. 

CCLI offers four types of copyright licenses. The first is the Church Copyright License (Basic), which covers most of the needs churches have, with the exception of streaming. The second is the Streaming License, which allows churches to livestream and covers most of those needs except for work that requires a Master Recording License.

The third, the Church Video License, permits churches to show videos and movie scenes. This license only applies to services in a church building, however, not ones that are streamed. Finally, the Rehearsal License allows worship leaders to distribute professional recordings solely for the purpose of rehearsing.

CCS offers two licenses: the PERFORMmusic Facilities License and the WORSHIPcast Streaming License. The former covers music played outside of a service that is not covered by the religious exemption clause, as well as secular music (which CCLI licenses do not cover). The latter allows leaders to webcast or stream music, but it might not cover copyrighted lyrics on a screen

What licenses do you need for a standard worship service? Well, said Lamm, if you’re singing out of a hymnal in a building without putting words on a screen, you don’t need any license at all. But most churches today are doing more than that and would therefore need the CCLI Basic License. With the basic license, you can freely use master recordings if you’ve purchased them legally and you’re only using them in your in-person church service. “However,” said Lamm, “when you go to streaming, life gets much more complicated, as you’re probably learning now.”

What Church Copyright Licenses Do You Need for a Streamed Service?

What licenses do you need for a streamed worship service? At the very least, you need the CCLI Basic License and the CCLI Streaming License. If you’re not using copyrighted audio or video recordings in your streamed services, those two licenses are the only ones you need. But if you use professional audio or video recordings in your service, you will need additional licenses for those master recordings.

Worship leaders should know that there are several publishers who are allowing the use of their master recordings during livestreamed services for a limited time during the COVID-19 pandemic. These publishers include LifeWayWorship, MultiTracks, and Worship Lyric Videos. Lamm is keeping an up-to-date list here of which publishers are making exceptions because of the pandemic.

When streaming your church service on YouTube or Facebook, worship leaders should bear in mind that those platforms have the authority and ability to interfere with your service, even if you have all of the required licenses. Said Lamm, “In other words, you need those licenses to be legal, but YouTube and Facebook can still give you a copyright strike, they can mute your music, they can add ads, they can pull it down completely.” 

You can always appeal those penalties, but there’s no way to prevent them from happening ahead of time. Lamm recommends streaming on Facebook over YouTube because the former is not nearly as strict as the latter and because it is easier to connect with people on Facebook.

For additional resources on church copyright laws, you can go to Resourcing Worship, Renewing Worship, and the Renewing Worship Facebook page. You can also reach out to Kenny Lamm directly via his contact information, which is included in the webinar.