Vicki Mack Lataillade Becomes Urban Representative for Christian Copyright Licensing International

CCLI President/CEO Howard Rachinski said, “For 20 years now, our heart has been to serve the church. We wanted to make churches aware of the copyright issues involved with copying music to assist with congregational singing and offer a simple, cost-effective solution. We also wanted to provide an additional revenue stream for gospel songwriters and publishers, so the majority of the licensing fee is distributed in the form of royalties, based on the amount of copy activity for each song.”

In addition, CCLI’s SongSelect subscription service provides churches with lyrics, samples and transposable lead sheets, chord sheets and hymn/vocal sheets from thousands of the top CCLI songs. A separate license agreement, known as the Church Video License, provides churches with the permissions needed to show movie scenes for sermon or teaching illustrations. Please visit www.ccli.com for further service guidelines.

Mack-Lataillade plans on registering gospel writers who may not know of the licensing services offered through CCLI. She underscores the point: “Through CCLI, there are a lot of songwriters’ families that are now living comfortably because of this undiscovered revenue, depending on the popularity of their songs. Churches need to be a part of CCLI. They can go to one place for transcribing and legal distribution of songs as well as licensing services.

In addition, Mack-Lataillade plans on structuring a weekly list of the top songs used by carefully selected churches and congregations. “We need to start understanding what the top songs are. So, writers and churches in our urban communities have got to get registered with CCLI in order to copy songs legally and support our writers as well. But on a larger scale, it will benefit our community as a whole. This is the ultimate win-win for both the church and the songwriter.”