CCLI now only accepting song reporting via their online website reporting tool !?

FromOZ

Hi - just wanting to confirm my understanding of the new CCLI reporting requirements is correct.

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It seems that now they only way CCLI will accept reporting of song usage is via their new online reporting website. They will NOT accept any data input from any application.<br>

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http://support.ccli.com/the-worship-planning-site-we-use-tracks-our-activity-for-ccli-can-we-send-that-to-you/<br></div></div><div style="font-weight: normal;"><br>

It all has to be searched for and entered manually, song by song. They recommend that churches do their reporting each week — I'm not surprised, it would be a horrible job to do a whole years' reporting song by song.

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Has any one else see this / is my understanding correct?

witterholt

Unfortunately I think you are right.

Matze

Hi,

I am thinking about switching our presenting software to openlp. There is just 1 function missing. "Auto-Reporting": https://de.ccli.com/auto-reporting/

Any plans to implement that in openlp?

raoul

@Matze I have no idea how that is implemented. CCLI does not work with developers unless those developers are willing to pay CCLI (I know this because I've talked to them about better SongSelect integration, and they require payment before we can do anything).

I also can't seem to find anything on their site that describes how that works or how to integrate with it.

I suggest reaching out to CCLI and asking them about it.

mleg

I have emailed the API team to see if anyone is working on a standalone integration tool to take CSV input and report via the CCLI API. This would be helpful to OpenLP users as well as others using software without CCLI automatic reporting.

raoul

mleg Thanks! Let us know if you hear back from them.

mleg

This is the response ....

Dear Mick

Thank you very much for your feedback. We always appreciate customer's input and comments.

I am afraid I am not aware of any plans to set up a system of reporting by sending a file. The reason we ask customers to report songs individually is because this is the only way we can ensure accuracy. This is the case for both manual and auto-reporting. We cover just over 500,000 songs and hymns and this list is ever growing. Many songs have the same or similar titles so we need to ensure the data is accurate so we can make the due royalty payments to the song authors whose work blesses us so much in our worship.

We appreciate this may not be the answer you were looking for. Reporting is a key part of the terms and conditions of your licences so we would be very grateful if you or someone from the church could pick this up in the near future.

You may also wish to switch to one of the apps which have the in-built auto-reporting system . We can highly recommend Presenter from WorshipTools which is a high quality, free app for projecting song lyrics and other media for your worship times. Please see a link below to their website where you can find much more information on their products and services.

https://www.worshiptools.com/en-us

If we can assist you in any other way please do not hesitate to contact us again and we will be very happy to help you.

Kind regards

raoul

mleg Yep, pretty much what I expected. They're only interested in integrations that give them money.

sean_hachem

raoul I just called CCLI to ask how much money they wanted to integrate auto-reporting with a developer. Pablo told me that as of about two months ago, they are no longer working with any new developers.

raoul

sean_hachem This is not surprising. They're only interested in money, in my opinion, from what I have seen.

jlgtx

The practical reality is that CCLI is probably not going to bother going after a church -- especially a small church -- that is paying the annual CCLI fees, even if not reporting song usage at all. They've never been all that serious about song reporting, but they're pretty serious about the fees. When I was overseeing a very small church that hadn't been paying CCLI fees in quite some time, I got a letter at least once per month, sometimes more often, to remind me that CCLI wanted their money. I never saw a letter reminding me to report song usage.

If CCLI truly cared about "due royalty payments to the song authors" then they would set up an easy and programmatic way for their customers to report song usage. I have yet to use any church presentation software that doesn't include CCLI data in its configuration and song database, so there's no reason CCLI couldn't specify a simple text-based format that could be implemented in any app to generate a report from any given service order file. The presentation app developers shouldn't have to pay licensing fees unless they are actually distributing copyrighted material within their product, which OpenLP isn't.

congoblue

I also contacted them about this a few months ago and got a similar level of disinterest (we run a custom database system to track song usage). Frustrating.

mleg

I sent this to their "partner@ccli" email ...

_Hi,

At our church we use OpenLP for our software for projection which does not have a link to do automatic reporting. They do however have tracking and can generate a CSV.

Is there anyone developing a standalone version link to your API from Excel or Google Sheets to facilitate automatic reporting?

If this was the case it would open up automatic reporting to more people.

Thank you,_

They responded ...

_We received your email request! The mailbox is for support of current active SongSelect API Partners.

If your email is about gaining access to the SongSelect API, CCLI has retired the SongSelect API Partner Program but continues to support the currently integrated partners.

Thank you!_

That says it all!

raoul

mleg If your email is about gaining access to the SongSelect API, CCLI has retired the SongSelect API Partner Program but continues to support the currently integrated partners.

This is very interesting. Thanks for letting us know.