When the pandemic forced many churches to cancel in-person services, it changed everything. Many churches switched to livestreaming their services. Instead of driving to a church building and sitting down in a pew, parishioners instead turned on their computers or tablets or phones and watched the priest or pastor give a sermon, the organist play voluntaries as usual, and perhaps a small ensemble of singers, standing safely 6′ apart, would sing the hymns and anthems.

Before the pandemic I was busy nearly every Sunday substituting at one church or another, playing concert gigs with community choirs and teaching enough organ lessons to keep me from saying that I was completely retired. Beginning in August, I took a position at Nuuanu Congregational Church but after only one week, the city was shut down due to increased number of virus cases and in-person services were suspended. I began recording my prelude and postlude to be broadcast on the church’s website.

I was aware of copyright regulations, and even though the church had a podcast/streaming license, I looked high and low for music in the public domain, you know, composers who have been dead and gone for centuries, like Bach, Sweelinck, Pachelbel, Boehm, Marcello and others. I even wrote a post about it: Copyright and public domain, where I wrote:

So I figured the easiest thing to do, at least for myself as the organist, is to only play music in the public domain— that is music created before 1924.

In the United States, any musical works published in 1924 or earlier, in addition to those voluntarily placed in public domain, exist in the public domain. In most other countries, music generally enters the public domain in a period of fifty to seventy-five years after the composer’s death. (Wikipedia)

I was feeling pretty good about my choices of repertoire, these last few weeks, and then this week I watched a webinar by the American Guild of Organists, called “Streaming Music Legally for Churches and Recitals” which I have embedded here. The webinar is long, over an hour and fifteen minutes, but one in which is so important that I urge all church musicians and clergy to watch it from beginning to end.

WOW! Livestreaming has completely changed the ballgame!

While we were having in-person worship services, we had the right to play copyrighted music without any further compensation to the publishing company or copyright holder. But the minute those services were broadcast through the internet, the rules changed! You simply cannot play copyrighted music without permission from the copyright holder, and even music in the public domain must be accounted for.

What I took away from the webinar was that even though I was playing only music by dead composers, I was still using editions which were published in the 20th century, that is, publications copyrighted after 1924! I most certainly was not reading from the composers’ manuscripts!

And of course, replaying a YouTube video during a livestreamed service is absolutely verboten without prior permission from the copyright owner!

The upshot is that churches’ webstreams may be shut down, removed or blocked if copyright violations are discovered. I am embedding again the YouTube video, “Avoiding YouTube copyright strikes when live streaming your service.”

For churches, there are two main agencies for managing copyright administrations: OneLicense.net and CCLI Church Copyright License. Churches are issued a license number which need to be posted prominently on their videos and in the video description. Churches are charged based on their weekly attendance, which can easily be confirmed through YouTube or Facebook for number of views. But it’s not enough to pay the fee to these agencies—you have to report on a weekly basis the titles of the copyrighted songs.

I quickly compiled a listing of all the music I had played over the last couple months, with publisher information, and sent it to the music director, Russell Ishida, for inclusion in the information section of the videos.

This copyright discussion is so important that I discussed it with Margaret Lloyd, our Hawaii Chapter AGO Dean, and she also felt it needed further enlightenment at a future meeting. We’re having a Zoom chapter meeting tonight where the topic will be briefly mentioned to make sure that our members are aware of the copyright laws in regard to livestreaming.

Sobering, isn’t it?