Hymn Accompaniments

During the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak you will probably not be holding services in church. If you intend to hold services online or have your congregation worship at home at the same time, we have a number of suggestions to enable hymn singing.

Almost all of our recordings are available on Spotify and can be played by anyone with a computer, smartphone or tablet at home. If you already have Spotify, run the program - alternatively, visit www.spotify.com and either download the program or click on Open Web Player and search for John Keys plus the name of the hymn - e.g. John Keys Now Thank We All Our God - you will the be able to play the accompaniment.

If you would like to provide a hymn list to your congregation, once you have found a hymn accompaniment and clicked on it, you will see the track detail with a … symbol to the right of it. Click the '…' link, select Share and then Copy Song Link. You will then be able to paste a link into your hymn list - for example https://open.spotify.com/track/27rf3RSPBEjQ1Oua7y4Imq?si=xW6DV-eETC6tBkt7siGnPA which when clicked will open the song in Spotify.

Spotify is the easiest way to share our music, but if you have our MP3 accompaniments, you can give the congregation access to this week's hymns to play them at home. Please do not copy the MP3s and email them - but it's easy to make them accessible using a sharing service such as Microsoft OneDrive.

If you have OneDrive, simply set up a folder and copy that week's hymns into it. Select the folder by clicking the little circle in the top right corner and select the Share option at the top of the page. You may wish to click where it says 'Anyone with the link can edit' to remove editing and set a date for the link to expire, then click Copy Link. You will be able to share the link with your congregation and they will be able to play the MP3s from a computer, smartphone or tablet.

Many churches are experimenting with conducting services by live stream, Skype or other video sharing methods. You are welcome to use our recordings during such services. If you are prerecording video and making it publicly available or effectively broadcasting - for example live streaming on Facebook or YouTube - please acknowledge John Keys and www.hymncds.com in the accompanying text. For prerecorded video only available to your congregation or directly connected live mechanisms such as Skype this is not necessary.

Please note that we can only give our permission for use of recordings - if the music is in copyright there may still be licence requirements for reproducing the music (this is not usually required in a church, but is for streaming/recording). Here is the UK guidance from the RSCM:

If music is involved, unless all the music is in the public domain written (both words and music) by composers and authors who died over 70 years ago – up to 31st December 1949, a licence is required.

At present, there are a number of options:

1. OneLicence.Net are offering a gratis licence up till April 15 2020. A ONE LICENSE licence grants churches, schools, religious communities, retreat centres, and other worshiping bodies permission to reprint or project music for their congregations from any of their Member Publishers. A ONE LICENSE Podcast / Streaming License grants permission to podcast or stream religious services that contain music from their Member Publishers. For new customers or for existing customers who do not already have a Podcast / Streaming License, ONE LICENSE is able to offer a one-month gratis license, valid through April 15, 2020. This would negate the need for a PRS licence during this period. Click here for details of OneLicense.Net gratis licence.

2. Those wishing to live-stream via platforms such as Facebook, Spotify or YouTube should be covered by the existing licensing agreements in place with those platforms. Please ensure you follow the terms of use and copyright requirements of each respective platform.
3. If a church wishes to host a live-stream on their own website then they can apply for a limited online music licence (LOML) from the PRS.
4. If a Church is utilising Zoom or Skype for live streaming their services, they should enquire directly with those platforms in order to determine the terms of use and relative copyright requirements.
It should be noted that whilst OneLicense covers many publishers, including OCP, Oxford University Press, Stainer & Bell and Taizé, it doesn’t cover ThankYou Music or Integrity Music.

CCLI do NOT offer a streaming licence. So to use songs not covered by OneLicense, you will need a PRS streaming licence.

A PRS Streaming licence will cost £146 a year, or £73 for 6 months. This may change in the near future.

Singing together over something like Skype is not very effective, as the different time lags will make the result ragged and messy. However, some churches are experimenting with a home choir.

Make available to those who want to take part a copy of the sheet music of a hymn or anthem (this should be acceptable as long as you own enough copies, or if it's out of copyright) and give them access to a copy of the MP3 accompaniment (see Give Access to MP3s above). Ask each individual to record on their phone an MP3 of themselves singing along - they should listen to the accompaniment on headphones so it isn't double-recorded - and to send back the recording. Combine the recordings with the original accompaniment in a piece of software such as Garage Band or Audacity… and you have a home choir in action.

If you share your recording online, please mention that the accompaniment is by John Keys and available from www.hymncds.com.

Thanks to the choir of St Nicolas, Newbury for this suggestion.