Holland Davis: On the surface the vision of worshipsong.com is very simple. Provide a way for worship leaders and worshippers to hear a complete song and download a FREE chart so they can teach the song to their church, bible study, or simply play it during their personal times of worship. It was born out of a conversation I had with Pastor Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa who said, “my sermons are free, why can’t worship songs be free.” So, I prayed and the idea for worshipsong.com was born.

Now, the unexpected surprise came when I received a call from an A&R guy in the industry who asked me about a song I wrote called “I Will Stand”. I asked why. He said it went from the 800’s to the 300’s on CCLI over one reporting period and he wanted to hear the song. What was the difference? Worshipsong. com. The only place the song was promoted was on the site. I learned from this experience that one of the benefits of worshipsong.com is greater exposure to worship leaders, which means greater visibility on CCLI.

Another surprise was the number of worship leaders and worshippers wanting to purchase the songs to distribute to their worship teams. I felt that a FREE chord chart allows me to fulfill Pastor Chuck Smith’s vision to make worship FREE, but I felt that a FREE recording would be asking too much. It takes a lot of money to record a song and I only felt it was fair to charge for the mp3’s. This led us to offer the ability for songwriters to sell their songs via worshipsong.com. This can happen one of two ways. They can sell their songs through our online store, or they can sell their songs by linking back to their website or iTunes. We also secured distribution into iTunes and 500 Christian bookstores via on-demand kiosks with selected songs from worshipsong. com. Our desire was really focused on ministry,