How A Church Music Subscription Service Can Save Your Sanity (and Pocketbook)!

If you work in a church music program, you know that there’s never enough time, talent, or money to get everything done. And some days, you’d settle for just getting anything done. It’s a challenging job.

Most music ministers in the United States are part-time or volunteer. That’s not to say that their job is less important or less demanding than those who get paid full-time. But the reality is that most churches can’t afford a full-time staff person (much less an administrative assistant).

And yet, there’s never a weekly worship service that goes by without music. Because they’re under-resourced, music ministers are often overwhelmed. Doing a good job can strain their sanity as well as their pocketbooks as they:

• Look for last minute music to coordinate with their pastor’s sermon
• Look for music that fits their congregation’s style
• Look for arrangements that work with their team’s skill level
• Look for songs their singers and musicians can rehearse and learn quickly
• Look for a way to blend the familiar and the fresh so that young and old are blessed
• Try to do all of this will little or no budget.

And don’t forget trying to balance all the demands of life, family, and working in a church setting.

Twenty years ago, choir directors picked their music by going to choral clinics, by browsing through anthems at a bookstore, or by reviewing choral club shipments several times a year.

With the explosion of Internet options, things have radically changed.

Most church music publishers now have their whole catalogs online. Buyers can purchase on these sites and have their orders delivered in a few days. Some publishers even allow instant downloads where buyers pay by the piece. While this is more efficient, it isn’t necessarily more economical. They’ve simply taken the old brick and mortar store model and moved things online. They still want to be paid for each item sold.

Compare this with the two different ways you can rent movies...

With the familiar pay-per-view or “on-demand” model, you can order a movie and watch it instantly. But you’re still paying for each movie. That’s different from subscription services like Netflix or Hulu where you pay one flat price regardless of how many movies and shows you watch. This is why subscription video services are growing exponentially.

What if there was an online church music subscription service that was more like Netflix than “pay-per-view”?

There is. And till now, it’s been one of the best-kept secrets in church music.

Discover Worship was started as “Worship Today” in 1999 by a volunteer choir director who faced many of the same challenges you face every day. Since then, it’s morphed into a completely online subscription music service that offers churches piano/vocal arrangements as well as the demos, tracks, and charts to perform them.

Discover Worship has two subscription levels—and both get you unlimited access to more than 2000 songs for search, full preview, download, and copying. You don’t pay by the song—you pay by the month or year. The premium subscription includes all the songs and tracks plus hundreds of orchestrations, dozens of seasonal musicals, and 50 video accompaniment tracks—all for one low annual price. And your price depends on your average attendance: smaller churches pay less, larger churches pay a little more.

With your membership to Discover Worship, you can change your song list at a moment’s notice, and it doesn’t cost you a penny extra. You can choose the style that fits your congregation and the difficulty that matches your team’s talent. We have hundreds of songs that are easy to learn and fun to sing by such respected arrangers as Russell Mauldin, Dennis Allen, Dave Williamson, and Bradley Knight. We’ve built a diverse catalog especially for churches that want to blend familiar songs with fresh, contemporary selections.

You’ve heard the old saying: “Quick, cheap, or good...pick any two.”

That’s just not the case at Discover Worship. When you’re a member, you can immediately download the resources for thousands of excellent songs by some of today’s most respected writers and arrangers at a fraction of what you might pay elsewhere.

Does Discover Worship have every song from every publisher? Of course not.

So if your church only wants to sing the top CCLI songs, then you can find the chord charts and lyrics at sites like Songselect.ccli.com, WorshipTogether.com or PraiseCharts.com. But if your musicians want actual sheet music and your singers want compelling vocal arrangements, you owe it to yourself to check out DiscoverWorship.com.

How good is our music? More than half of our members use our arrangements more than half the time. And more than 10% of our members use our music 100% of the time. Here’s what a few of our members recently told us:

This music has greatly enhanced our worship. I enjoy the sheer numbers of music; it's one stop shopping for me. Without Discover Worship, we would not be able to have a choir. -- Dennis, Bellville, OH

I love that I can get music for my choir for an annual subscription. My church is struggling financially, so I buy the membership with my own money, and it really helps stretch my dollar. – Anonymous

I like that I can get lots of quality music for a great price. No hassle, no waiting. I can search, browse, listen and download in one sitting, anytime day or night. I am a volunteer, so my daytime hours are spent at another job. -- Lara, Zebulon, NC

This is by far the best music service I've ever had!!!! I've spent a lot if my own money (we are a financially deficient church) trying to find the right music for our small choir and your service came along and helped so very much. Thank you!!! -- LeeAnn, Three Rivers, MI

If you’re a music minister at a smaller church and find yourself struggling—or if you’re at a larger church and are looking for an easier, more affordable, and more effective way to find music—we’d love for you to discover more about Discover Worship's church music subscription service.

It’s a great way to guard your sanity... and your wallet!