If you have ever been involved with building church services within a worship presentation software, then you’ve more than likely considered at some point or another what legality or right you actually have to display popular lyrics, videos, and content. 

If you’ve had those thoughts, you’ve likely been brought to a company called CCLI. They are a great faith based company that specializes in copyright licensing for churches. They offer a simple software solution that gets you covered on all things “big screen” related across the board. They also get you cross platform integration, meaning you’re covered whether you’re running on Windows or Mac.

This is extremely important as it provides a great amount of flexibility and coverage so that you can display exactly what you want to, how you want to, through your preferred software for churches. 

In this article we will examine a few helpful things that CCLI provides including a membership to SongSelect, and dig into just how easy it can be to integrate their platform with ours here at MediaShout.

THE IMPORTANCE OF HONOR

As churches we have a duty and an obligation to display and live honorable lives in everything that we do. Whether it is from preaching from a pulpit, through personal counseling, or building a presentation in the media balcony at home, what we do and how we do it matters.

After working here at MediaShout for a few years now, we consistently get asked about what the best way to go about using videos, songs, and movies in service is. It’s shocking to think about but there are tons of churches who just honestly don’t know what they can do legally.

According to an article posted by the site “DataProt”, it appears that “Digital Video Piracy” alone is costing the US economy between $29.2 and $72 billion dollars per year. It’s no surprise that the movie/film industry is such a big driving force of revenue, not to even mention songs or other forms of copyrighted media.

Those statistics alone are more than enough to push more churches into getting covered legally so that the presentations they build are honorable and legally moral!

CCLI provides exactly that. They specialize in getting you the copyright license that you need for your church so that you’re LEGALLY displaying the media content that people spend years creating and putting out in theatres or on your favorite streaming platforms. 

Having a CCLI license is one of the single most important things that you need to run a powerful church service as it also covers your ability to display lyrics and songs that are copyrighted as well.

Every time a song is created, it’s written and recorded by one or more people. It then goes to be mixed and mastered. Afterwards it is typically marketed and released into the public. It takes a whole village to do this and often times the people who created the song in the first place don’t see much if any of the profit of what they did or created. Having the proper permission to use their songs is honorable as well and it gives the credit to those who dedicated their time and gift to building it from nothing! 

WHY SONGSELECT IS AMAZING 

Now we’ve covered the idea that you need to be legally covered to show video files, audio files, and lyrics to your stage view for the audience to see! For the lyrics you may be thinking that that is all fine and dandy, but how do you find those lyrics and upload them to your presentation software.

For years churches would import songs by copying and pasting (using a drag and drop process in otherwords) or typing them within the program itself for long extended periods of time. 

Until CCLI developed a sister company called SongSelect. With a SongSelect Membership you can easily and quickly download and insert songs directly from their database into the lyric library of the software you use! 

This saves time like no other presentation tool on the market. When you integrate their membership with the MediaShout 7 program, your process of creating and building becomes drastically faster.

When you create an account and receive a “Song Select Login”, you’ll be able to insert worship songs into the program in no time without havin to worry about if what you’re pulling in is legal!

MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN

MediaShout, CCLI, and SongSelect are a match made in happen. Having each bounce off of each other and pair really really well! When they are working and intertwining together, you’ll have security in knowing what you’re displaying and showing your audience is completely legal! 

Do you use SongSelect or CCLI? If so, tell us how it has helped your ministry. We’d love to hear from you.