A case study is offered in "Love to Share":
"A music director in a small church in the United States must spend a large percentage of her time on copyright issues. To help with the issue of copyright, her congregation bought a license through a licensing agency that allows the church to use hymns for an annual fee. As part of the licensing requirements, she must document the music used each Sunday. But not all the songs the director wants to use are covered by the license. To use them, she must contact the original copyright owners to seek permission, which takes times and costs additional money. Sometimes it feels like she spends more of her time and the church's money on copyright issues than on ministry." (30-31)
This is certainly true. I have seen it from my time growing up with my mom as a music director, and I see it now myself as a Music Ministry Coordinator at Cross of Hope Lutheran.
My time has taught me though, that the vast majority of hymns or worship songs that might be used in either a traditional or contemporary music setting are covered under CCLI (Church Copyright License). If wanting to supplement this license further, holding OneLicense and CCLI together usually cover better than 95% of songs from experience that I would want to use.
These license agencies/groups make it easy for the church musician to have access to the proper rights to use music- whether in music notation form, printed lyrics or projected lyrics. Having central locations and resources such as these can take some of the worry and angst about copyright issues away, and allow those in these areas of ministry to be able to more deeply focus on making music and praising God rather than if they have permission to use a certain hymn/song to do so.
Additional Note: There are also options which give denominational permission to use a certain church's worship materials and liturgies. For the ELCA, this is Sundays and Seasons.
Interesting stuff! Ignorant question here: I'm surprised many hymns are covered by copyright laws. I always assumed they were old enough to be public domain, so free for anyone. Who has the copyrights? Or I am even more ignorant, and don't realize how many hymns are somewhat modern?
ReplyDeleteThat's not an ignorant question at all Tim. The majority of hymns you will find in a hymnal are old enough to be public domain, if you are thinking classic hymns like "A Mighty Fortress," "Beautiful Savior," "Amazing Grace," etc.
ReplyDeleteAlso, by owning an entire set of hymnals for a congregation, the congregation obviously gets to use anything in the hymnal as long as they are singing from/using the hymnal. It gets tricky though when you want to take stuff and print it directly in a bulletin for example. Because much of what is in the hymnal has separate copyrights preventing the use of printing without an additional copyright license agreement. Examples of hymns like this, which can cost $25 per Sunday of use (or more) are "Here I Am Lord," "Christ Be Our Light," and many others which have been written in the last 5-25 years generally.
Because of the print fee, the contemporary service back at First Lutheran never uses "Here I Am Lord," because for the cost its just not practical.
For those separate copyrights, they are held by a variety of entities. Some by the composers themselves, some by smaller music companies, and even others by groups of nuns. ("Christ Be Our Light" has its copyright actually owned by a group of nuns in the State of Oregon if you can believe it.)