# CCLI Reporting and Royalty Flow **Summary.** CCLI (Christian Copyright Licensing International) is the primary licensing and royalty-distribution infrastructure for contemporary worship music in North American and global Protestant congregations. Understanding how it works is practically necessary for worship teams deciding which songs to sing, and it illuminates who benefits financially from the dominance of Bethel/Hillsong/Elevation music in the CCLI Top 100. --- ## What CCLI Is CCLI was founded in 1988 in the United States and now operates in over 100 countries. Its core purpose: allow congregations to legally reproduce copyrighted worship music — in bulletins, projected lyrics, recordings, and online streams — by paying a single annual license fee rather than negotiating song-by-song with individual publishers or rights holders. **Without a CCLI license**, printing song lyrics on a bulletin, projecting them on a screen, or streaming a worship recording would require individual copyright clearance for each copyrighted work — an impractical burden for most congregations. --- ## License Types ### Church Copyright License (CCL) The foundational license. Covers: - Printing lyrics in bulletins - Projecting lyrics on screens during worship - Making overhead transparencies and song sheets - Making song-based visual media for use in worship **Does not cover:** recording audio or video for streaming or broadcast. ### Streaming License (SL+ or Streaming Plus) Added in the streaming era to cover: - Live-stream broadcast of worship services - On-demand replay (YouTube, church website, etc.) - Podcast distribution of recorded services St. John's UCC would need this if its services are posted publicly online with copyrighted songs sung. ### Recording License (RL) Covers audio recordings — CDs, downloadable recordings made and distributed to the congregation. ### Rehearsal License Covers recording rehearsals for internal use (not distribution). **Practical note for St. John's UCC:** Most congregations that live-stream need both the CCL and Streaming Plus (SL+) at minimum. Annual fees are tiered by congregation size. --- ## How the CCLI Top 100 Works CCLI compiles usage data from participating churches and publishes a ranked list of the most-reported songs — the "CCLI Top 100" (and Top 25, Top 200). This list functions as the *de facto* canon of contemporary worship music for English-speaking Protestant congregations. ### How songs get reported Congregations self-report song usage through their CCLI accounts. Every time a copyrighted song is used in a service — projected, printed, or sung — it should be logged. CCLI aggregates this data to calculate royalty distributions. ### Royalty flow CCLI collects license fees from congregations → aggregates usage reports → distributes royalties to copyright holders (publishers, songwriting rights holders, record labels) in proportion to reported usage frequency. **This means**: A song in the CCLI Top 10 generates significant royalty income for its rights holder. For Bethel Music, Hillsong Worship, Elevation Worship, and Jesus Culture — all of which dominate the CCLI Top 25 — the CCLI royalty stream represents substantial institutional revenue. > [!contradiction] > **Theological concern and financial incentive.** The congregations that sing NAR-adjacent songs in good faith are funding the institutional expansion of the movements that produced them. This is not a reason to refuse all CCLI-licensed music, but it is a reason to be aware that song choices are not theologically neutral and not financially neutral. Singing "Oceans (Where Feet May Fail)" (Hillsong) contributes to Hillsong's revenue even after Brian Houston's resignation and the organization's scandals. --- ## CCLI's Data Limitations Brian Hehn ([[Center for Congregational Song]]) has documented several structural limits of CCLI data: 1. **Self-reporting bias.** Congregations under-report. Songs used without logging do not generate royalties, which means smaller, less-resourced, or less-CCLI-literate congregations are underrepresented in usage data. 2. **Skews toward larger churches.** The CCLI Top 100 reflects the practice of well-resourced congregations with projection equipment, licensed software, and staff who log usage consistently. Smaller and house churches are underrepresented. 3. **Genre and format skew.** CCLI's licensing framework was designed around contemporary worship music. Traditional hymns (public domain) do not appear in CCLI data at all. Congregations that sing primarily from hymnals are largely invisible to CCLI metrics. 4. **The "Top 100" as proxy.** The CCLI Top 100 is not a representative sample of what all American Protestant congregations sing. It is a representative sample of what well-resourced, contemporary-worship-oriented Protestant congregations sing. Treating it as "the music of the church" is a category error. (Source: [[2026-04-24 Worship Music Vetting Compendium]]) --- ## CCLI and the Ecumenical Vetting Project [[Brian Hehn]]'s ecumenical CCLI meta-project uses the CCLI Top 100 as its input list — not because CCLI data is perfect, but because it is the shared reference point denominational vetting teams can compare against. His goal is a cross-traditional greenlit list of CCLI Top 100 songs. The participating denominational projects (UMC, CRC, ALCM/Lutheran, Anabaptist/Mennonite, Roman Catholic) each vet the Top 100 against their own criteria. The intersection — songs cleared by all participating traditions — is expected to be small (Hehn has estimated five to eight songs at most). **The UCC gap:** The United Church of Christ does not participate in this ecumenical project and has no comparable denominational vetting effort. St. John's UCC's [[Worship Song Vetting Rubric St Johns UCC]] could serve as a UCC entry point into Hehn's project. --- ## Public Domain and CCLI Many traditional hymns are in the public domain — no copyright, no CCLI reporting required. This is significant for worship planning: - Isaac Watts's "I Sing the Mighty Power of God" (1715) — **public domain.** No royalties, no reporting. - Thomas Ken's Doxology (1674, OLD HUNDREDTH) — **public domain.** - Miriam Therese Winter's "O for a World" (1987) — **under copyright** (Medical Mission Sisters). Requires CCLI coverage for congregational use; standard CCLI or OneLicense licensing likely covers it. - Bethel Music's catalog — **under copyright.** Every use contributes to Bethel's royalty income. > [!question] > Does St. John's UCC currently maintain an active CCLI license? If so, which license types? If not, is the congregation operating under copyright without a license, or relying entirely on public domain and licensed denominational resources? --- ## OneLicense — the Catholic/Mainline Alternative For congregations using significant Roman Catholic or mainline Protestant published repertoire (GIA, OCP, Hope Publishing, Augsburg Fortress, etc.), **OneLicense** (onelicense.net) is the parallel licensing system to CCLI. Many UCC congregations use both: - **CCLI** for the contemporary/CCLI Top 100 catalog. - **OneLicense** for GIA, OCP, Hope Publishing, Augsburg Fortress, and other mainline publishers. *New Century Hymnal* (UCC's official hymnal) songs not in the public domain are licensed through their respective publishers. Some are covered under OneLicense. --- ## Practical Implications for St. John's UCC 1. **Verify current license status.** Confirm whether St. John's holds a CCL, SL+, or both — and whether the congregation size tier is accurate. 2. **Log song use.** Consistent CCLI reporting is both a legal requirement of the license and the data source for royalty distribution. Inconsistent logging is common in smaller congregations. 3. **Know what public domain means.** Songs in the public domain (pre-1928 in US copyright law terms, or otherwise cleared) require no CCLI reporting and generate no royalties. These are "free" in every sense. 4. **Be aware of the royalty chain.** Singing a Bethel, Hillsong, or Elevation song funds those organizations' continued operation. This is not a veto, but it is relevant context for a congregation in the process of vetting its repertoire. 5. **Consider OneLicense.** If the worship team wants to expand into mainline-published global song, GIA catalog, or UCC/UMC published material, OneLicense may be the appropriate complement to CCLI. --- ## Tensions > [!contradiction] > **Infrastructure normalization and theological drift.** CCLI's licensing infrastructure has made it administratively easy to sing contemporary worship music and administratively neutral regarding which contemporary worship music a congregation sings. The ease of licensing does not track with theological discernment. A congregation can be fully CCLI-compliant while singing exclusively NAR-adjacent material. The vetting projects exist precisely because CCLI does not make theological judgments — only administrative ones. > [!question] > Is CCLI's dominance itself a market-structure problem? The CCLI license incentivizes congregations to use CCLI-catalogued songs (since they've paid for the license), creating a structural tilt toward the contemporary catalog and away from public domain hymnody and non-CCLI-catalogued music. Does this tilt serve the congregation theologically? --- ## Open Questions - What is St. John's UCC's current CCLI license status and tier? - Does the congregation have an OneLicense subscription? - Are songs currently being logged consistently for CCLI reporting? - If the congregation switches away from a song on theological grounds (e.g., stops using Bethel material), does CCLI reporting capture that shift — and does it reduce royalty flow to the source organization? --- ## See Also - [[Worship Music Vetting Projects]] — how denominations evaluate CCLI Top 100 songs - [[Worship Song Vetting Rubric St Johns UCC]] — St. John's draft rubric - [[Worship Songs Evaluated]] — living record of specific song decisions - [[Brian Hehn]] — ecumenical meta-project coordinator; UCC contact - [[Center for Congregational Song]] — Hehn's institution - [[Calvin Institute of Christian Worship]] — CRC vetting partner