The CCLI Church Rehearsal License is an important license for any church that distributes recordings of songs to their team.
Let’s say you want to give your team 10 new songs to learn this year. You buy the songs on itunes, convert them into an MP3 and upload them to PlanningCenterOnline.com. Everything’s good right? Not quite.
For many years it was very time consuming and very costly to legally distribute recordings of songs to your Worship Team. It wasn’t hard to do, but it was hard to do legally. Thankfully the CCLI Church Rehearsal License has made this so much simpler.
A lot of Churches are misinformed about Copyright Law.
Here are some of the excuses people give as to why it is okay for their church to distribute a copy of a song and not pay for it.
1. I’m not selling it.
2. We’re a church – so we have exemption.
3. We have a CCLI license that covers it.
4. It’s not a physical copy, we’re just streaming it online.
5. It’s just for rehearsal so it doesn’t matter.
6. I’ll never get caught – they don’t care about my little church.
Although these sound good, none of them are true.
I believe most people want to do what’s right but many times they have been misinformed or don’t take the time to find out what the law says.
When it comes to Copyright Law, ignorance is not bliss.
Here’s the truth.
If you distribute an original recording in any way to any of your team members, you must have permission from the publisher (and pay the royalty fees), or own an original for every copy distributed.
Thankfully, CCLI has a Blanket License that allows churches to legally distribute CD’s and give their teams access to stream or download songs over the internet.
It’s called the CCLI Church Rehearsal License and if you distribute recordings in any way, you need this license.
The Rehearsal License gives your church “blanket coverage” to distribute (almost) every Christian song to your team for rehearsal purposes. This means that you are covered from legal action and aren’t required to pay royalties for each song.
The CCLI Rehearsal License is an add-on to your CCLI License (you need one of those too!)
There is a yearly fee that’s based on your church size. Here’s a screenshot of their pricing structure:
Based on this pricing 99% of churches can be covered for $166/year or less.
One of the best things about this license is that there are no limitations to how many copies you can distribute.
What’s the downside? You do have to report every song you distribute. It takes about 5 minutes a week to report but it is well worth the effort to know that you are doing things legally and ethically.
So go ahead and give those 10 songs to your team to learn. With the Church Rehearsal License you can do so knowing you are honoring the artists and honoring Jesus.
Our church pays for the use of multi tracks for songs and rehearsal. Do we still need a CCLI Rehearsal license in this case?
If you are only using the tracks provided by Multitracks for your team to rehearse with, you do not need a CCLI Rehearsal License. The CCLI Rehearsal License give you permission to distribute original recordings of songs (Hillsong, Tomlin, Bethel etc.) to your team so they can practice.
Will this license cover making rehearsal tracks for choral music? For instance, playing a demo recording in the background and recording myself singing the tenor or bass part to help our choir rehearse their parts at home? It would be recorded as an mp3 and emailed to our music group.
Hey Kyle!
The CCLI License does NOT cover audio files sent to your team. It mainly only covers lyrics be printed or shown.
You need the Rehearsal License add on in order to send demos to your team unless you are recording the entire demo from scratch (just a piano and your voice for example).
https://us.ccli.com/rehearsal-license-terms-of-agreement/
The Rehearsal license is an add-on to your CCLI license.
Good afternoon. My question is if I have been doing the background pics & lyrics of worship songs for my church and I now want to progress to selling some of my background creations what do I need to do?
Also, it is the same for secular music as well. –Ex. A non well known artist wants me to do a background for them performing in a small mom & pop venue while they sing a known artist song that I have put some background pics to? Thank you so much for you knowledge. I appreciate you. Have a wonderful week.
Hey Christine,
You can sell any pictures you take without issue because you are the creator / owner of those pics. But selling products that include lyrics of copyrighted songs in them would require you to get permission from the authors & publishers and pay them royalties on the products sold.
The process would be similar for secular music – you’ll have to get permission from the author and pay the appropriate royalties.
We are a very small church with no musicians. I pay for YouTube Premium and we sing to various piano recordings of hymns feom YouTube. The music portion of our service is not live streamed, and we currently do not display any lyrics on screens but do occasionally have to print lyrics if it is a song that we don’t have enough song books for. Do we need the CCLI or any of the add ons ?
Hey Milissa,
If you are distributing lyrics in any format (digital or printed) you will need the CCLI license in order to do that legally.
Also, I totally understand being in a small church and not having musicians. Thousands of churches show Youtube videos for worship. However, according to the YouTube terms (at least how I understand them) it is not permitted to show YouTube videos in a public setting – unless you have permission from the author.
I’m not saying you should or shouldn’t – I am saying you should just check into it if you want to do it legally. Or maybe look at other resources that offer videos to be played during worship.
Hope this helps!
In your response to Kyle on May 18, 2023, you indicate that recording a rehearsal demo from scratch is allowed under the CCLI Rehearsal License. However, the Rehearsal License link posted seems to say that this would not be permitted. Which is it?
Allen, Thanks for the comment. In the past it was my understanding that churches could record their own versions of songs and that was covered under the fare use act, but as you observed, CCLI states on their websites that is not allowed under the Church Rehearsal License.
Here’s where it’s stated: https://us.ccli.com/rehearsal-license-terms-of-agreement/
What is said: “NOT ALLOWED TO: Record your own version of a song in a Recording for distribution to your church worship leaders, musicians, vocalists or any other person”
Thanks for bringing that up!
Can you stream a song from YouTube with the lyrics printed on the screen with a rehearsal license?
Lisa, No.
The Rehearsal licenses does not allow you to STREAM anything. It is only to distribute Recordings of songs to your team for rehearsal purposes.
The Streaming License does give you permission to streaming songs that are played live – but it does not allow you to stream songs from YouTube in any way.
We have a rehearsal license from CCLI – are we able to listen to the song by ear, write a chord chart, and send that chord chart to worship team members for rehearsal? If no, what license is needed to do that? I know about song select but I am wondering if we can negate song select by writing up our own charts from scratch? Thank you.
Hey Kevin!
The short answer is yes! You can write your own chord charts and send that to your team.