Here are 24 of your most frequently asked—and most easily answered—questions. Many of them had to do with the web site and product mix. As a friend of mine used to say, “Yes is easy; No usually requires an explanation.” So expect some of both...
Please know that—while we can’t do everything well—we want to do the most important things with excellence to serve Christ and his Church. Thanks again for sharing your ideas.
We’re listening! And answering:
1. How can I fast-forward when previewing an audio demo?
The easiest way to do this is to first click on the title of the song to pull up the dedicated info page for that song. On this page, when you hit the “play” button, you’ll notice a long, thin rectangle that fills up with yellow as the song plays. You can click anywhere in that thin rectangle to move forward and backward through the song.
2. How can I keep a song playing while looking at other pages?
You’ll need to keep page of the song you’re listening to open if you want to continue listening while you browse other titles. To do this, you’ll need to use the “tabs” feature of your web browser. Instead of simply clicking on a song to go to its info page, click on the title with the button on the right-hand side of your mouse (what we call a “right-click”). When you do this, you’ll get a small menu with an option that says “open in a new tab.” Choose that option and the song will open in a second tab within your web browser. Click the “play” button you see in this new tab, and you can then switch back to your search page and continue the hunt for new music while the song plays in the background.
3. When I click on a recommended song in the newsletter, why does it takes me back to login?
Under normal circumstances, you are automatically logged out of your account whenever you leave our website. This can be frustrating and lead to the above scenario. But we have a very simple solution! The next time you log into our website, take note of the checkbox under the password field that says, “Remember Me for 30 Days.” If you check this box before you sign in, the computer you’re using will stay logged into our website for the next month, so anytime you click on a link in our newsletter, you’ll be able download it immediately and not lose your place.
4. How can I find my bookmarks?
If you log into our website, you’ll see a yellow box in the top, right-hand corner of the screen that says “My Account.” Click that box to go to your account page. Once there, just a couple of inches below the “My Account” button you just clicked, there’s an orange link that says “My Bookmarks.” Click that link for a full list of everything you’ve tagged to save for later.
5. Is it possible for me to see if I’ve already downloaded a song before I look at it again?
Not yet, but we’re working on it! In the meantime, there’s a full list of everything you’ve ever downloaded from us on your account page (see question 4 above), under the tab called “My Downloads.” Of course, depending on how long you’ve been with us, that list may be very long and tedious to navigate. Fortunately, if you have one of our annual memberships, you can just download that song again, and it won’t cost you a penny more.
6. Can the songs be displayed in alphabetical order?
Yes. Whenever you do a search, you’ll see an option just above the first song to have your search results displayed by “Title” or “Most Recent.” Clicking on “Title” will display them alphabetically and allow you to scroll by page. Additionally, you can select to display 9, 15 or 24 results. By choosing “24,” you’ll be able to scan a larger number of songs before clicking on the next page of results.
7. How can I get the most out of the search feature?
Our search feature is like a bloodhound that lets you sniff out songs based on any of the information that appears on the song page. You can use the search bar (in the upper, right-hand corner of the website) to zero in on title, artist, writer, arranger, topic, or scripture, just by typing one of those things into the bar and hitting “enter.” There are, however, some limitations. You’ll want to use the search bar to search only one of the things from that list at a time, and then use the categories that appear along the left-hand side of the page to further narrow things down. You can’t currently search by song lyrics unless those lyrics are in the title. And take a look at question #10 on this list for tips on searching by scripture.
8. Can I search by partial song titles?
You certainly can! For the best results, choose a word or words from the title that is the most distinct and least likely to show up in a lot of song titles. For example, if you’re looking for “O Sacred Head Now Wounded” searching the word “sacred” or the word “wounded” will get you to that song much quicker than searching for “O” or “now.” And if you’re using multiple words, make sure those words occur together in the title. For example “O Sacred” will get you the song you’re looking for, while searching “sacred wounded” will leave you quite disappointed. [And you should probably never search for the word “holy” by itself if you’re trying to save time. Your friends and family may never see you again!]
9. I wish I could search for particular words in song lyrics.
So do we. While we’re working on that, take a look at the tips in questions 7, 8, and 10 to help you get the most out of our available search tools.
10. How can I search by scripture reference?
To search by scripture, just plug the book and chapter into the search bar, hit "enter," and it will give you a list of songs tagged with that reference. A lot of our older songs aren't tagged with verse numbers, so you'll want to leave them off - for example, "John 11" will get you better results than "John 11:35." Please contact customer service if you need any additional assistance.
11. I wish categorization of songs by theme/topic was more complete and accurate.
We did, too. So in 2016, we spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars going through more than 2000 entries and updating the description, themes, topics, graphics, and scripture verses. It’s not perfect, but it’s much better than it’s ever been.
12. I can’t seem to find a selection from the past—has something happened to it?
Possibly. While we strive to get perpetual use licenses from all of the publishers whose music is featured on our site, on a rare occasion the license for a specific song will expire, and we can no longer offer it. If there’s a specific song you can’t find, email customer service, and we’ll check the status of it.
13. Can I listen to music or view the sheet music without an account?
You CAN listen to the music, but you won't be able to view the sheet music without an account. BUT there’s no charge to sign up for a free account to view the music while listening to the whole song. Just click here. Once you go to our site, you’ll need to login (or stay logged in for 30 days). In order to actually download songs, however, you’ll need a paid membership.
14. What about practice tracks?
Almost all of our songs are available with split track or stereo accompaniment tracks—and a few have both. Unfortunately, we usually don’t have access to separate Soprano/Alto and Tenor/Bass practice tracks that feature just those parts. We understand how helpful they can be, but we don’t have the resources to go back and recreate them from our existing masters or lease them from outside publishers who may or may not have created them.
15. Why doesn’t Discover Worship have the latest modern worship songs by artists such as Chris Tomlin or Matt Redman that we hear on the radio?
Great question. As you may know, songwriters assign their works to publishers who are responsible for maximizing their impact and income. Discover Worship licenses songs from publishers on a one-time blanket basis, often for perpetuity. Most publishers shy away from such “one and done” agreements—preferring to monetize their copyrights on a “per use” basis. Our site is not set up to bill each customer for each download and--if we did--we wouldn’t be able to offer our incredibly low membership prices. Nonetheless, there are many respected publishers who work with us, and we appreciate their willingness to help us make high quality arrangements of thousands of excellent songs available to you at such an affordable price.
16. Could there be a lower price membership?
We asked ourselves that same question at the beginning of 2016. Our answer was to create a three-tier pricing structure where smaller churches pay less and larger churches pay a little more. If you have a choir of 10 (and buy one copy of an octavo for the director and another for your accompanist), you’d ordinarily spend $24 ($2/piece) + shipping for every new song you purchase. Our lowest annual price for our smallest congregations is less than half of what you’d spend to traditionally purchase just one new anthem a month! We challenge you to do the math and discover the incredible value. Click here to check out what your savings would be.
17. Could you bring back dramas?
We’re not sure whether you’re talking about Musical Dramas or Drama, per se.
For many years, Discover Worship offered a very limited selection of drama scripts for churches that purchased an Unlimited Annual Membership. In the last year or so, we opted to eliminate the drama offerings and—instead—reduced the annual subscription price to $75 for unlimited access to more than 800 faith-based dramas through our sister company, DramaMinistry.com. Click here to get a free, 3-script sampler and more info about the service.
If you’re referring to Discover Worship offering more Musicals with Drama, we’ll look into that for the coming seasons. Not every church can pull off a theatrical production, but we could certainly look into incorporating more dramatic parts (as opposed to narration parts) into musicals in the days to come. Thanks for your feedback.
18. Could your site offer instant transposition?
In order to provide transposition, all of the assets would need to be in a format such as Finale and our site programmed to do the transposition. Our catalog has developed over the past 18 years and there isn’t a strict uniformity regarding the source files. That said, most of our downloads include a MIDI file from which you might be able to transpose the piece.
19. Could you offer orchestrations on every song?
Whenever possible, we negotiate access to orchestrations from our outside publisher partners. When we can’t get them, it’s either because they’re not available or not affordable for us under our license structure. But we ask every time!
20. Could you offer releases in Spanish?
Wow, this is a terrific question! Based on the growing Hispanic population in America and around the world, it’s a great idea. The biggest challenge we have is the cost of translating and re-recording the vocals. Additionally, many publishers view translations as “derivative works” for which new licenses would have to be negotiated. Like many other things, it’s just not logistically or financially feasible at this time.
21. Could you offer more two-part and small choir arrangements?
Yes. Over the past two years, we have made a concerted effort to add more two-part and simple arrangements to our catalog. [We would invite you to check out a number of new releases from Luke Woodard.] That said, we’ll continue to prioritize more simple pieces in coming days.
22. What about more organ and handbell music?
Our surveys show us that the instrumental music—especially piano solos—is very important to our member churches. We’ve added a number of solo piano hymn arrangements over the past several years and will start looking for some piano/organ duos. To be honest with you, we’re probably not going to acquire much additional handbell music. Sorry.
23. I liked receiving review CD’s and music by mail—any chance Discover Worship could offer that?
You’re probably one of our faithful members from Worship Today—the precursor to Discover Worship. Back then, we sent monthly review CD’s and a magazine that included reproducible sheet music. As marketing costs increased, the cost of manufacturing and mailing grew prohibitive. In order to keep subscription prices low, we went fully digital in the Fall of 2012. We realize this disappointed some of our friends, but we hope that the upside has been worth it. You can now download all the songs you’d like to review into a playlist for your mobile or desktop device—or even burn them to a CD to play in your car or use in rehearsal. Check out this online tutorial to find out how: http://www.discoverworship.com/videos/view/32/how-to-burn-a-cd
24. Could Discover Worship consider adding a Lectionary function to the site?
Our team has discussed this in depth the past several years but has never come up with a workable solution. With more than 2000 current songs, the time and energy involved to create and update a lectionary resource with each month’s new releases is considerable. We’ll keep this on the back burner for now.
That’s it for now. Hope this helped!
--Andrew Collins, Customer Care
