Public Worship songs are written for the church to sing. We want them used — in your gatherings, your worship nights, your team's recordings. This page is the plain-language guide. The full contributor-side policy lives at /music-policy.
We are a nonprofit. The point of these songs is for people to sing them. If your church wants to put one of our songs in a Sunday service, on a worship night, in a youth retreat recording, on a livestream, or on your worship team's album — please do.
We use the standard worship-music infrastructure (CCLI, PROs, The MLC) so that doing the right thing is also the easy thing. In almost every case, your church already has the license you need.
Public Worship has not released its first song yet. We're in the writing and recording season. Before our first release, we will register the catalog with CCLI, a performing rights organization (ASCAP or BMI), The MLC, and SoundExchange — the standard set that lets churches sing our songs under their existing licenses and lets us participate in royalties when songs travel.
Until those registrations are live, the guidance on this page describes how it will work. We'll update this page with our CCLI Song Numbers, publisher info, and PRO affiliations as the first release goes out.
If your church holds a current CCLI license — most churches with regular gatherings do — that license already covers what you need to use Public Worship songs in your services. You do not need to ask us first.
Under a standard CCLI Church Copyright License, you can:
Under a CCLI Streaming License, you can also include our songs in livestreamed and on-demand recordings of your services on your church's website, Facebook, YouTube, and similar platforms.
When you report songs to CCLI, that report flows back to the writers and to Public Worship Publishing. Reporting is how church use translates into support for the people who wrote the songs. If your church is on CCLI, please report ours when you sing them.
Not on CCLI yet? Most churches in the US/UK/Canada find it the simplest path. us.ccli.com.
Yes — we want you to do this. A church band recording its own version of a Public Worship song, for its own album, EP, or single, is one of the most mission-aligned uses of these songs we can imagine.
The CCLI Church Streaming License and CCLI Cover Recording License (CSPL) are the right tools for this. They let your church record, produce, and distribute your own version of an eligible song. Most of our catalog will be eligible.
What this looks like in practice:
You don't need our permission for this. The license infrastructure is the permission. We'd love to hear about it after — we'll share church covers we love.
One limit: the CCLI cover license covers re-recordings of the song with your own performance. It does not let you re-distribute our master recording (the actual file we released). For that, see sync below or write us.
Anyone — not just churches — can release a cover of a Public Worship song commercially under the US compulsory mechanical license. You don't need our permission. You do need to pay the statutory mechanical rate (currently roughly $0.124 per copy for songs under 5 minutes), routed through The Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC) for streaming and through your distributor for downloads and physical.
Most modern distributors (DistroKid, CD Baby, TuneCore, United Masters) handle this automatically when you mark a release as a cover and supply the original writer info. That's the standard path.
What you can't do without our permission: change the lyrics in a way that alters the meaning of the song, or pair the cover with sync (visual media) — those require additional licensing. See sync below.
Sync — pairing a song with visual media — requires two separate permissions:
Public Worship grants both for uses consistent with the ministry's mission. We have a written posture on what we'll review more carefully — see music-policy §19.
For a sync request, write us at hello@publicworship.life with the project name, the song(s) you want, the use (film / TV / ad / online video), territory, term, and a short description. We'll respond within two weeks.
Can our worship night fundraiser sing one of your songs?
Yes. Standard CCLI license covers it. If the event is ticketed and at scale, your venue's ASCAP/BMI license handles the performance side.
Can we record our youth retreat with your songs and post it on YouTube?
Yes, under your CCLI Streaming License.
We want to release a worship album as a church and put one of your songs on it. Cool?
Yes — please do. Use the CCLI Cover Recording License or the standard compulsory mechanical license through your distributor.
Do we owe you anything?
Not directly. Your church's existing CCLI license already routes a portion to writers and publishers based on your reporting. For a commercial cover, the statutory mechanical handles it. The infrastructure does the work.
Can we change the words?
Small adjustments for fit (gendered language, regional phrasing, a missing pronoun) are fine — the worship tradition has always done this. Substantive lyric rewrites that change the meaning of the song should be checked with us first; the writers have moral rights to the song's intent.
Can we translate it into our language?
Yes for congregational use under your CCLI Translation/Custom Adaptation rider. For commercial release of a translated version, write us — we'd love to see it.
We're not on CCLI. What now?
Easiest path: get on CCLI. It covers the global worship catalog, including everything we'll release. If CCLI isn't an option for your context, write us and we'll figure out the right license together.
The standard worship-music licenses cover almost everything a church or worship leader will ever want to do with our songs. If you're looking at this page and your situation isn't covered, write us — we'd rather have a quick conversation than have you walk away unsure.
