A

Well, welcome to the Lead Worship World podcast. I'm Steve McPherson from multitracks.com and in our episode today, I caught up with Stephen Brewster from the Harmony Group, and we talked about our church music bootcamp, which is coming up very shortly in Austin, Texas, as a part of the Multitracks Conference. And in this bootcamp, we're going to talk about publishing, distribution, and talk about the music industry side of church music, which is really important but can be complex to get involved with in the church environment. I really enjoyed our chat today. I know you will also and consider joining us in November in Austin, Texas, for the Multitracks Conference. Enjoy. Well, hi, my name is Steve McPherson. I am the Licensing and Partnerships Director at multitracks.com we're super glad to have you with us here on this podcast. And today I'm joined by. By the Right Reverend Honorable Stephen Brewster. Stephen, how are you, my friend?

B

I'm good, thank you. That's a lot of expectations very early in the conversation. So we're going to dial those back a little bit and then. Good to go.

A

Yeah, it's just how I feel about you, man.

B

Well, I appreciate that. Thank you. Very kind.

A

Stephen, why don't we start off by you just giving us a bit of background, a bit of a bio on what you've done over the last. A little while.

B

Yeah, absolutely. So I was in the music business for a long time. I left the music business to go work in church. I thought that was forever. And it just didn't end up being forever, unfortunately. And in a really tough season of life, kind of moved a couple different places. And in 2017, found myself just asking the Lord what was next and felt like he was telling me that I was going to do ministry in a different way than I had done it in the past. And so he started opening doors for me to help churches release music. And that's what myself and our team, we get to do now, is we help churches all over the country release their songs. And some churches you've probably heard of, some you may never hear of, but we are honored to just get to help churches everywhere do what they're trying to do. So you, on the other hand, have a very, very, very respectable resume. And so I think it would be wise for you to tell us because you're gonna bring any credibility to this conversation at all.

A

So now we're the pressure.

B

You have a great backstory.

A

Yeah, I've been in and around church music, I don't know, 35 years or so. Started as a Young teenager just desperate to write songs and play music. I kind of have this unique upbringing in that both my parents are deaf. I don't know if you know that, Steve. Maybe you do.

B

I didn't know that.

A

That's fascinating. So, as a young kid, my two younger brothers and I started bands really early and were playing, you know, in our garage, and we had parents that just didn't care how loud we played. So we just played at all times. Right. And I. And maybe our neighbors complained, I don't know. But yeah. So music was a thing for us really early on and through different circumstances. Found myself at what was Hill's Christian Life center at the time and got involved in the youth worship band and started leading worship in youth and writing songs. And that just led to a whole life, really, around the Hillsong team, writing songs and leading worship. And then somewhere along that track, years into it, I was working for ccli, which you'd be familiar and everyone would be familiar with. Brian Houston approached me and said, hey, look, we need some help with our publishing over here, you know, and that at that time, I was signed to Hillsong, was writing songs, and somebody else was running out publishing at that time, and Brian said, we just need someone to take it to the next level. So I came on staff at Hillsong at that point, and then just like most people who might be listening to this podcast, figured it out, just dove straight into it and just try to figure out how to do this publishing thing. How to do contract with songwriters, how to pay royalties.

B

Yeah.

A

How to license songs externally. And so when I first took that on, it was just myself. And then when I left there four years ago, there was a, you know, a team of 15, 17 people, I think, on the publishing side, and we were managing not just the Hillsong works, but we were administering other works, and I think we had 200,000 works at that time. Wow. So that I left there four years ago, and I've been with the Multitracks team ever since. I feel really blessed for my past. I've spent time on boards of publishing societies and the pros over here in Australia and have just been in and around the music. The wider music industry for some time. So, yeah, I feel like I've had a really blessed ministry career over the last 35 years or so, and here I am today.

B

Those who are listening today, you're probably listening to learn about how to do this, like Steve's expertise and history. There's not a lot of people that have really good longevity in ministry and it is such a testament to you, the impact that you've had, and just the fact that you've done this for as long as you have. It's very, very commendable. So I don't want to let that moment pass without acknowledging that for sure.

A

Thank you. That's kind of you. I appreciate that. Like I said, I feel very blessed to have had the experiences to work with the songwriters who've been involved in some really great stuff over those times. So thanks for saying that. I appreciate that. So today we want to talk about the church music boot camp that we're doing here at Multi Tracks. And you and I jumped on a couple of calls, and we realized that both you and I pretty much do the same thing. We just talk to churches all day, every day. And I realized very quickly in this role and even in my previous role that this area of music administration, music distribution, music creation, and recording is complex, and it can be a bit of a minefield. So just give me some background as to. I mean, your whole company. What you do at the Harmony Group is built around the needs that are out there in the church. Just give us a bit of a perspective of what you see out there.

B

Yeah, I mean, I think everyone starts with great intentions, right?

A

Yeah.

B

And probably, like a lot of areas, other areas of life, the more successful something becomes, the more complicated it gets. And so the purity of. We're starting this off today because we want to write songs for our church. That's where everybody pretty much starts. Now, if there's anyone on your team that. That's not where they're starting. You probably don't need them in the writing, on the writing team, because their agenda and their expectations are going to be different and ultimately be unmet. And so everyone starts from a very pure place. We want to write songs for our church, and then from there, they start to accidentally find out all of the complexities that go with writing songs for your church. You know, it sounds pure and simple, and it is until it isn't. And so we help churches navigate from the very beginning. How are you structured? How's your publishing structured? How is your royalty structure on the masters? Have you made it clear to everybody what's what, who owns what, and where all the money goes? And all the money for the first, like, 10 years is about $70.

A

Yeah.

B

So. And then we. We really walk them from that space right there. Very similar to a record label. We do everything with and through their team. We help them with distribution, we help them with publishing administration, we help Them with release strategy, marketing strategy, relationships. We do this thing called church camp, where churches come together and write with other churches, which is like super fun. So we really, it's.

C

It's interesting.

B

People are like, are you a manager? And I'm like, some days of the week I'm a manager, and some days of the week I'm a publisher, and some days of the week I'm a record label, and every day of the week I'm a social media consultant. Because that's what we all end up doing at the end of the day.

A

Sure. Exactly. Yeah. I find, I mean, what you, what you do in terms of serving the church is so unique and so needed. I think I've said this to you before. The church needs you and there are others out there doing it. But what you do is particularly good because you're whole ended. Like you are beginning to end. Looking at publishing and royalty structures and culture and the whole thing. And you really are a solution to, to churches. And I find I speak to churches and there's this confusion around, well, what's the difference between a song and a recording? Isn't that the same thing? And that, you know, those basic conversations are really the conversations you're having. And I know I'm having. I'm sure many people are having with churches. But as the core behind why we wanted to do this boot camp is we wanted to provide an opportunity to go there with the people who want to join us. So we should say up front that the boot camp is on the Monday of our conference, which is the 10th of November in Austin, Texas. So all the details of that would have been provided either part of this podcast or on our socials. But what we're doing today is really to kind of go through what we're going to look at. Steve, let's chat about for a second. That mix of, you know, that heart of we're the kingdom of God, we're a community of people. We want to write songs that our people can sing, which is a great thing, you know, and even we want to sing the words that our senior pastor or our teaching pastor is teaching. We want to sing that and bring that into our service in another way. So there's that basic desire to create songs within a community and then how that crosses over to, oh, right now we need to start talking about rights and we need to know who owns what. And all the stuff we just talked about and contracts, royalties, that step from step one to step two can be quite a challenge.

B

Oh, for sure.

A

And as you Would, too. I speak to churches who sit in different places of the pendulum. Oh, we want to give everything to our songwriters, and if they write great, it's all theirs. Or we are a church. We really want to bring that ownership into the church if it's brought in and written within the church environment. Let's talk through some of what you're seeing out there in the church today. Of that. Yeah, just from, you know, simple desire to. Oh, we need to structure this, you know.

B

Yeah, absolutely. So starts with simple desire. And then as soon as the first check shows up, that's pretty much when the executive pastor begins to panic and wonders how exposed they are to risk in that moment. And when we're working with the church, we're going to start in that place. Who's on your writing team? How frequently are you writing? What are you writing? Because if you're not writing just the songs that your church can write, we don't need another Red Rocks, another Elevation, another Bethel, another Gateway. We have those, and they're awesome, and we love those people.

C

But we need you to bring the

B

thing that only you can do. Right.

C

And so we always tell teams, start with, what is the thing that your church is known for in your community?

B

If it's discipleship, if it's outreach, whatever

C

it is, start by writing those songs. And then what's going to happen is

B

those songs are going to start to

C

get a little bit sticky. And as they get sticky, they're going to start to generate streams and thus revenue. And then one day, because church is transient, Steve, you know this. You've been in church for a long time. Bono is never leaving you, too. He's locked in for life.

A

That's right.

C

But no matter who your worship leader is, there's a high probability at some point they're moving on. And whether God's calling them to something else or they feel called out of ministry completely, or, God forbid, there's a failure of some type, but at some point, they're probably not going to be there anymore. And at that moment, you've got to know. It's like way you write contracts for divorce, not for marriage, you know? And so when that person is called to go do something else, even if it's beautiful, what are they taking with them? What are they leaving with you when they're gone? And your song blows up five years after you've released it and other churches want to license that song, how are we going to make sure that their partner is licensed if they're not here anymore? And so the two things that I feel like are quantum physics to the music business are publishing and sound exchange. And so if what we try to do is like, we try to take that step you talked about is a pretty steep step, and we try to put a ramp on it and help. Help teams walk into it really, really easy.

A

Yeah, that's good.

C

You have a pretty unique situation. Most churches don't write songs to the level and the size of. Of impact that you've gotten to work with. How did you guys manage that tension at Hillsong?

A

Yeah, I mean, in the early days, we had just as you explained and just as a lot of churches would have, we were writing songs because we were just passionate about our own congregation and our small circle of churches that we knew locally and wanted to write and sing what was being taught from platform and what we were about. And then somewhere across, you know, the history of Hillsong, it just became bigger than what any of us expected. I remember as a 20 something year old, way back in the. In the Hillsong days, I was a part of writing a little song called Jesus Lover of My Soul, which maybe people who are watching this don't even remember that song at all. But this is a classic scenario. I think of the early days of Hillsong where someone came to me and said, oh, we need to know what the splits are of that song. I was like, right, what's a split? What do you mean a split? Well, we need to know there's three songwriters on that song. We need to know what each of you own of that song. We're like, why do you need to know that? Well, because there'll be royalties payable. There'll be what? Royalty, you know, so it's just right. That conversation was probably a conversation many of the songwriters back in those early days were having of. Why do we need to do this then? I mean, when I left, it was a completely different thing altogether. You know, all of a sudden, any of the younger guys that were coming through that I was working and we were developing, it wasn't that conversation at all. It was, how do we protect you from the industry side of this? How do we keep this as clean as possible? How do we keep this like it was back in the old days? We were just writing out of passion and desire to serve the church and verbalize our heart and now walk with God and, you know, so they're very different things. So I think what you said a moment ago is you, you have to prepare for the future if you're going to do this as A church and even that. I mean, we should go back on that very point of purpose. Why are you recording music?

B

Why are you doing it?

A

You know, and we'll definitely touch on that at the boot camp. But if you're going to do this and you've made a strategic decision as a church leadership, we're going to do this. And this is a part of our ministry to our community and the wider community. You have to prepare yourself for that future, for the future of, okay, what happens if people leave and what happens to money, what happens to ownership, but also what happens if this actually succeeds and these songs travel beyond our scope? And I think we did the best we could at Hillsong. I think we did reasonably well. We figured it out, but there were things that we had no idea we were going to have to deal with in our latter years that did cause us, you know, some. Some internal discussions and different things we had to deal with around. What do you do when you write a song and you've got a couple of songwriters and it becomes the biggest song in the church around the world? I mean, Ocean's for the Hillsong story. Exactly. Example, you know, three songwriters who wrote a song, young guys. And then you've got a vocalist who did a phenomenal job that just made that song way bigger than it. Than it ever thought it was going to be. I mean, I don't know if people realize this, but maybe the guys have talked about it in different places, but Ocean's was on the scrap floor and never made it and was picked up. And one of the producers says, give me another go at this and let me see if I can put something together here. So there's. There's just. There's participants, there's three songwriters, there's a producer, and then there's a vocalist all together made this song what it was and what it is today. But each of those groups of people are treated very differently, and each of those people have different contributions and are treated differently in the music industry.

B

Right.

A

We didn't expect that, and I don't know that many churches would think about those different aspects. And we'll probably. We'll go through that, I think, at the boot camp and. But songwriters have different ownerships, even different legal ownerships to a producer and a vocalist. Performers have, you know, a part of the ownership. Do you find that. Let's just talk about that. Do you find that that's a conversation you have with churches? If they. They get people up to record something, they're just not considering the performer they might be considering the songwriters, but the people actually singing and performing the songs. Do you, how do you deal with that?

B

We talk to them about it. Yeah, we talked to them about it right from the beginning. And typically what we'll do is there might be some people who hate this. So the first thing is it's always fluid. Right. So each project is a chance to reset the rules, but you have to reset them before the project starts.

A

Right.

B

Because it's unfair to change the rules in the middle of the game.

A

Yep. Right.

B

But for the majority of churches that haven't written Oceans yet, we tell the performers, the worship leaders, hey, we're going to pay you a flat fee for each song that you lead. Basically almost like a work for hire. Even if they're on staff, it's like a little bonus. We're going to pay you this and you're probably going to get that bonus

C

and it's going to be way more

B

than the royalty ever would be on

C

that song for the performer until you write Oceans.

A

Yeah.

B

Right. And so we advise our teams to do it in a work for hire

A

to claim this way.

B

Because most churches aren't set up for royalty accounting or label service accounting. Like they don't. We want the lady who's in your business affairs office to go to heaven and if she has to learn royalty accounting, she is not going to make it to heaven. And so we're going to make crowded heaven less crowded. If we don't find the right systems and tools to help your church do it the right way.

A

That's excellent. I love that. I mean, that's very wise. And that's, that's exactly the scenario that we were in. You know, I think we, we paid a small work for hire situation for, for the people participating. But when you get an oceans, even that, that question or any other bigger song, that question becomes a bigger deal and a bigger conversation, which it did for us. That I think that's really wise and that's, that's what I love about what you do, Steve, is you don't just teach, you actually provide solutions and you help, you hold hands of the churches doing this through the process. I love that.

B

We're really blessed.

A

Yeah.

B

Like the teams that we work with, they become part of our family and so we have a lot of fun because you, you're growing something, you're creating something together and it's fun to watch that gain momentum and impact, like ministry impact, you know.

A

Yeah, that's good. Let's just do a quick run through of the basics here, music industry is really explained through songs who are created by songwriters or that are created by songwriters, recordings that are created by artists and performers. And they're very separate things and they're treated very separately in the industry. Songwriters are represented by publishers who represent the rights of songwriters and license, collect royalties, represent the integrity of those songwriters and they develop songwriters. Good publishers develop their songwriters and create opportunity for songwriters. But that whole side of things has nothing to do with the recording.

B

Right.

A

You could have a great song that has multiple recordings owned by different people. And so a recording or the recording side is dealt with labels, labels sign artists to create recordings. Labels will work potentially with publishers or songwriters to find songs for their artists, hence the name A and R artist and repertoire. And then from there, performers have a right in a recording and that right is collected and paid on by companies like SoundExchange specifically for the performers. That, I mean, that, that in a nutshell, I haven't even talked about radio and live performance and all the rest of it, but that in a nutshell is what we're looking at.

B

The, the crazy thing is at the beginning we talk about, you start very simply with a very pure motive.

A

Right.

B

Well, what you don't realize is the first time you put that song on tunecore, your church just started a publishing company, a record label. The record label is also the artist. And you probably have no structure built for, for any of those things.

A

You know, I often say you have to separate all of those roles that I just described. All of them might be the one entity, the church or the one person.

B

Right.

A

But that those roles are important. The songwriter, 100%, they have different roles. It could be the same person, the same 100%, and then the artist and the label, different responsibilities. And you have to separate those and segment those in your structure moving forward and doing that well at the beginning, even if there is no money involved, is how you succeed at this. I think it's just setting that up. I mean, structuring that.

B

Yeah, hopefully you're setting yourself. I mean, most of the churches that are going to release music, they have enough local influence in their local community that they have some type of structure for how they collect money on Sundays and where that money goes.

A

Right.

B

They didn't just decide one day we're going to put an offering plate out and then we'll just figure it out later. You know, like you walk in and you have a budget and you have, you know, what's going to benevolence. You know, it's Going to kids ministry, you know, it's going to student ministry. It's very similar. The one difference is releasing music is like planning a church, not launching a campus. And so you're going to do something that you've something brand new with resources that you've learned how to manage and steward with no education? Because there's really not, I mean it's complicated to get a good education on this because I mean, ChatGPT can only lead you so far.

A

Yeah, that's right. And even, you know, trying to get objective education on this that's not linked to a product or a distribution. Right. Or, or whatever. 100 can be a challenge for churches today. Absolutely. Get advice that's not linked to something that's been sold to them. Yeah, that's, that's really interesting. I find that the first question that has to be answered by churches I think is are you going to be that record label and publish or the individuals in, within your community and then helping churches understand what that means. Are you going to be the contractual party that signs songwriters or signs artists to a recording contract of some sort, you know, some description. Because that step is significant. Right. If you start out as a, I mean think about the, the core purpose of a church is to disciple, teach the word, create community, have a place of worship somewhere that you can come and be vulnerable and share your relationship with God with other like minded and faith based people. Right. Then you all of a sudden become a music publisher or a record company that has requirements. And I think the very question of whether you do that or you don't do that needs to be answered. Or do you bring in a third party that maybe could do that for you so that you can function as a church or structure it differently. Tell me about some of those conversations you have with churches. Because you'll be having those often every single day.

B

Just like you, every single day. You know, the beauty of writing and releasing music is that you are creating missionaries and discipleship tools that are going to go further than you intended, like further than your reaches on the missionary side. And hopefully they're developing and discipling the people that are in sitting in your pews. Right. And so I think before you even write the first song, well, maybe not write, you could probably write it and it'd be fine. But before you record the first song, you need to sit down with your leadership and ask them what is our appetite for this? And when I worked in music that was not related to just worship or just churches. Like if the artist was really Cool. The songs were good. They could perform them live really well. That's kind of all it took to get signed, right? Like you were like, I, I can make something with this, it's cool. Well, you can have the coolest thing in the world if your leadership's not supportive of it on the executive level, senior pastor or executive level, if they're not supporting this and encouraging this, if they don't understand that it's not going to be a profit generating line item for several years. We usually say 7 to 10. It takes a lot of discipline, a lot of consistency, a lot of social media. Those are all things you got to answer before you even get to should we start a record company? And, and what does that even mean? Like, are we going to sign our worship leaders and release their solo projects? Are we going to just do church projects? And so it's important to have expectations. Everything in Create in the creative world rises and falls on expectations. If you don't clarify them early, they're going to get complicated later.

A

That's right. Well, let's face it, contracts are written expectations. Right? This is what we expect from party from each group. That's kind of what that is. And so when that's done early, it's clean. It's when it gets to the point where someone has to stipulate, wait, we have a contract, that there's a contract here and we both signed it and I have to remind you that we have a contract. That role gets a little, little tricky when you're in the environment of a church and I'm also your pastor and you know, that becomes challenging. I do, I must admit, in my current role and because of my previous role, one of the questions I get asked so often is, should churches be record companies? Full stop. And it's a tough one. I always say it depends. It depends on your structure, it depends on your culture. It depends on how you're going to do this and who you're having in your court to help you do this. You know, I just know that this is, it's not a light hearted decision. You really have to think through what this is going to look like in years to come and how you balance that contract and the heart and the passion behind us as a community people. I think one of the things we did well at Hillsong and there were things we didn't do well, but there are things we did well is that we had creative pastors that knew nothing. Nothing. Maybe they knew a little bit, but they weren't involved in the business. Side at all. And so their role was purely pastoring, purely developing, purely working with people. They weren't the ones at the end of the contract kind of working through the business side of it. Having that separation, I think, was really, really good for the Hillsong group, because there was just wasn't always about.

B

It's probably vital.

A

Yeah. And so those of us that worked on the business side, while we were pastoral at heart and we cared about our people and we cared about the development of the ministry and what we were doing and what we were passionate about, we were not the pastors. We were very separated in that role. So I don't know if you have thoughts on that or on that blur between that.

B

So I think it's important that there's someone who is responsible to talk to the lawyers, and that sets the expectations for everyone. And I don't know that it can always not be someone on the creative in the creative world, but it's better when it is someone who's not in the creative world, because if the same person who's leading the team is writing the songs, you're instantly creating suspicion because everyone's heard all the horror stories, right? Of, like, everyone's stealing their publishing and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Most of those stories are more fables than anything else, but they become folklore and people believe them. And it's just better to have someone who's unbiased, doesn't have anything to gain, to be able to come in and speak truth and honesty, you know?

A

Yeah, that's right.

B

I have a question for you that I would love to know. On the intellectual property side, how did you guys at Hillsong handle, like, every church has an employment manual now, and in that employment manual, it says that all the IP goes to is owned by the church. Right? And there's no compensation for that other than your salary. So the. The guy who's making graphics or videos or writing curriculum, it all belongs to the church. How did you guys handle the uniqueness of songs and how that that rule didn't quite apply to the worship team?

A

It's a good question. I got that very question in an email from a church this morning. So it happens all the time, this conversation. The stance that we took, rightly or wrongly, was the church waived any owned IP that it could assert for the people that were employees or on staff at the church. So there were worship leaders, music directors, different people who had different roles. None of those people were employed to write songs. And it was very clear in their job descriptions. You're not employed to write songs. You're employed to pastor, do music direction, lead worship, so forth and so forth. And then the church waived any rights to any IP they created. Therefore, it allowed me and my team to do separate publishing agreements around their song that wasn't tied up in their employment. Now, I say rightly or wrongly to that in that if you were a graphic designer hired by the church, all that IP was owned by the church. So there was that tension. Oh, wait a minute. This person's on staff and they're a musician and they're writing songs, but the church doesn't own that. I'm creating graphics and the church owns my ip. So there was that tension that we just have to deal with. And it. We felt it was different.

B

Yeah.

A

But that just to be vulnerable and just honest to say, that was. That was a challenge.

B

Yeah. And I think it's a challenge for everyone.

A

Yeah, that's right. Same with our video guys. And. But in that circumstance, because all that IP was not tied up and the church waived the ownership of that, then allowed us to do publishing contracts, then it was the whole. And we went in and out of this conversation. Should the church own anything here? Or should the church just administer and represent the rights of the songwriters? Should they own publishing or should we not? What does that mean? If we owned. I guess a big thing that we had to think through was if we don't own, if the church. I say we. The Churchill song doesn't own, does that mean that the church potentially could be separated from those songs in the future? Are we happy with that? A songwriter could take songs and take them somewhere else, which they ended up doing. But if. If the church owned songs, maybe we could actually hold onto those songs. And wherever the writer's share of that went, the church would retain the publishing side of that. In the end, we decided to not own. And I'm not saying that's the way to go. That's the decision that we made. We chose to waive ownership in the publishing portion of the song and purely administer the song on behalf of the songwriter. So the ownership was pained by the songwriters, and the church acted as an administrator. In the early days, that was fine, because as you would know, Stephen, an administrator share of any royalties was pretty low. It's a lower share of that.

B

Very low.

A

Yeah. But as things started to grow in the early days, that's for all. That's all we were doing is collecting checks and paying checks, and we weren't doing much. But in the latter years, we were doing Everything as full service publisher was doing. We were pitching songs, we were setting up collaboration, we were developing songwriters, we were placing songs and had commitments on placing songs. And we were pitching for syncs, we were pitching for covers, we were. We were doing everything what a full service publisher for doing, but on a administrator rate. So it became a challenge of, wait, we're doing all of this work now and we're committed to that contractually, but we're still collecting administration rates. So then rate conversations would be had over years and, you know, should we own. Should we not own? These were the challenging conversations that we would have throughout those periods.

B

And I would think that different seasons of ministry, the different, different stages of the growth process, the answer was right, but different in each of those stages, you know, And I think that'll be something that'll be fun to talk about at the event, because at the beginning, when you're just getting started, it's going to look very different than when you turn into Hillsong or Elevation or Bethel or someone else, you know, and as it gets more successful, it gets more complicated.

A

I think this core to the philosophical conversation is whose song is it? Is it the songwriter's song that they have graciously brought to the house, to the community, to the church, however you refer to it, or has the church provided this songwriter with an opportunity and a platform to create this song? And that might sound like what's the same thing. No, it's not. It's actually very, very differently. Very, very different. And I think your perspective of this is the songwriter's song. This is their song. We're privileged that they brought that song to this house that could structure you, your agreements and your. And your corporate structure, if you like. Whereas if you've. If you've got a platform, if you've got a setup and the songwriters are privileged to bring their songs to that platform, that will definitely instruct how you set up your structure as well. So, again, I think that's a Phil philosophical conversation that all churches need to have.

B

Right.

A

And I think over from my history, I've been in both of those camps where it's the songwriter's song. And I must admit, even internally, I've kind of taken different journeys through that where I've thought differently about that. Yeah, I can see you smirking because I know you. You know what I'm talking about there. And you've seen that in your own world, in life.

B

And we talk about it on a spectrum, right? Yeah. Like, because if the church is commissioning the song and they're giving you work time to write the song and they're funding your trips and, and you're writing and, and they're platforming that song. Would you have wrote, would you have written that song if those levers weren't in place 100%, you know, and it's like, it's, it's, it's art, not widgets. And so there's going to be a little nuance to each relationship, to each leader, to each culture and how that culture handles it for that season.

A

Exactly, Ron. Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah, it's really tough sometimes, I think, when you develop an environment for songwriting that actually really is powerful to do the development of great songs. When you have that environment of just collaboration and creativity and no holding back and really, you know, being able to bring your best to the table, that's a great thing. And so it's highly appropriate to have that conversation of, well, we've, we've, as the church group, have allowed this to happen and created an environment to have for, for that to happen. No great art just happens right. In isolation. And so, yeah, it's definitely part of the conversation, that's for sure. Yeah. Stephen, talk to us about distribution. You mentioned TuneCore a little while ago, which is, I mean, these days I can record anything in my, in my lounger and put it on tune call, create an account and stick it up there on all DSPs pretty quickly. What are the, what are the options and what are the journeys that you see are available to churches today? In terms of distribution, the way we

B

talk about it is you have independent, complete independence. Then you have distribution agreements and administration agreements, and then you have record contracts. Right. And those are kind of like the three mile markers of the journey. And will everyone take that full journey? Absolutely not. In fact, most people won't. But the first thing you have to do is have proof of concept. So if you go on Spotify every Friday, you're going to see 400 new worship songs. 350 of them are terrible and 50 of them are. Okay, are good. Most of the 350 that were released are a part of a 10 song album. And it'll be another 18 months before they ever open that TuneCore account again and release something. Right. So if that's going to be the level of your commitment and consistency, you should use TuneCore DistroKid. Once you've proven that you can be consistent and that you can continue to deliver on a strategic release schedule, you're having a little bit more volume, you have a little Bit of catalog, and you have a track record of being able to show up and release good songs on a frequent level at that point, then you're ready to start having the distribution conversation. And, you know, at the event, we can talk about different ways and methods of that. There's all kinds, and most of them are really, really, really great. And then if you continue to grow from that stage, then maybe at some point there's a record label that looks at you and says, hey, we'd like to do business with you. We'd like to be your partner. We'd like to help amplify your ministry even more. And we're in such a unique place. Steve. Probably a very different place than Hillsong United was when they were releasing their first album. The fours Franks and Josiah, Queens and Nick D's of the world, Connor Prices of the World, have introduced our world to being an independent, successful independent artist.

A

Sure.

B

And the truth is you can do that. But they still took that exact same journey. They just made the decision at those mile markers to continue forward on their own.

A

Yeah, yeah.

B

You know, and so it still all started with the same place. They were in their house. They made a song, they put it on TuneCore. See what would happen now, for most of those people, they decided to release a song every single week for like two years. And then all of a sudden, they had accumulated a following that was rabid for their release. And if you do the once every 18 months thing, you're never. You're not building a community that's following what you're doing. It's so funny when a church has never even released an album before and they're like, you think you can help us get a distribution deal? And I was like, probably not. I can help you grow into a distribution deal.

A

Yeah.

B

But I can't help you get one.

A

So that's good. That's good. And even label deals aren't label deals. Right. So, I mean, they will differ totally to group. And that doesn't mean one thing. That can mean multiple things. Yeah.

B

Like, it can be a straight artist deal, which is going to be revenue is going to favor the label, and they're going to own a lot of things. There can be a license deal.

A

Yeah.

B

That's probably more of a partnership. So, yeah, it, you know, I'm sure we'll go into a lot more detail, but it can get. We can fall down that hole really, really quickly.

A

Yeah. And it's the same on the publishing side, too. A publishing deal is not a publishing deal. I mean, they are. They differ. And there are different options, arrangements around ownership, around shares, around responsibilities of either party. We'll go through that in the. In the boot camp as well. Let's touch on. Live a little bit and give me your perspective on. Okay. We're at church. We've been doing this for some time now. We're regularly releasing music. We've developed a real audience. Churches are singing our songs. When do we get on the road? Like, are we starting to do festivals straight away? What does that look like in some of the. In some of the clients that you work. Work with?

B

Yeah. So we're blessed that we work with quite a few clients. And of our church clients, I'm trying to think, I would say less than 5% of them tour. The same rule applies for the 5% that tour and the 95% who don't.

A

Right.

B

You cannot do anything that compromises a weekend. And so if anything that you're doing is. Is not building your local church, it's taking away from your local church, you got to stop it right now. Because even the senior pastor with the greatest appetite, if they see that it's compromising the vision and the mission of the church, they're going to raise the flag, as they should, and be like, hey, are we. Are we doing the right thing here? Are we doing it properly? You know, I would say that before you ever hit the road, you probably need four songs that have completely outpaced the influence of your entire church. Right. So, like, other churches around the globe need to be singing at least two of those four songs.

A

Agree.

B

You know, because if you go into. If you're from Denver, Colorado, and you go into Cleveland, Ohio, why am I going to go to a worship night that I have to buy a ticket for if I don't know those songs? Like, sure, I'm going to go buy a Post Malone ticket and go to that show. I'm not going to buy a ticket to go listen to you sing me your church's worship songs that I don't know. And the world has changed, too. Like, I would say even eight years ago, 10 years ago, if you didn't tour, there was not a really good chance of your music going global. But nowadays, like, this is your tour.

A

Like, that's right. That's exactly.

B

Be really good at this.

A

Yeah.

B

People vote, right? People vote on what they want to support, what they want to believe in. This is the voters box right here.

A

Yeah.

B

And so before you're even worried about getting on the road, start telling compelling stories about the Ministry that's happening at and through your church and through the songs of your church.

A

Yeah. Well said. That's why you're great at what you do, Steve.

B

No, it's just I have the same conversation every day.

A

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. I think people assume the journey, right? They assume. All right, we've got a growing church here. Let's start writing songs. Okay. We've got some songs here. Let's start recording. Okay. We've done a few recordings. Let's start taking this on the road. That journey doesn't look the same for everyone. And when you start making those assumptions, you miss the real heart of that. And sometimes, like you said, it's just not gonna work. It's just if you've got songs that have been sung and known throughout the wider body of Christ, sure, there's a story to tell, there's a ministry there, but it's gotta be deeper than just even. Just the great songs. Yeah. Let's chat before we finish up. It's one thing to write songs. It's one thing to get them on dsp, Spotify and Apple and so forth, but really, in our day, it's about getting churches to sing those songs. I mean, there's nothing wrong just to release to the listening consumer. We've got playlists, and we do that. But to really see the impact of that, you've got to be thinking about how these songs are going to work in the church down the road or even the church across the globe, how that's going to look for us at Hillsong, that's structured the way our songwriters wrote in the latter days, where they actually were thinking about our church, but we're actually thinking about the church down the road. Is this going to work? Is this going to cross over? Is this going to cross denominational lines? But then, more importantly for my team, we had to think about resources. We had to think about being in places where worship leaders go and making sure that if a church decides this Sunday, oh, we're going to do that song, that's a great song. Can they get those resources? And that's sheet music. That's multi tracks.

B

Right.

A

Waving the flag. That's training resources to teach musicians how to play the parts. It's. It's a whole bunch of things. Yeah. From our perspective.

B

And I think you follow the songs, Right? So if you start off. And I would. I wasn't there. But you were there. I would guess that when you guys started writing songs at Hillsong, you weren't writing them for the Church across the globe. You were writing them for Sydney.

A

Exactly.

B

And I think that, you know, social media has made the globe very small. And so now we have worship leaders who've never written a song before coming in, trying to write the next church anthem. And the truth is, it has to start with your church. Write your church's anthem. Your church. There's a. There's probably a whole bunch of other churches on the planet that believe the same thing and do the same kind of ministry that you do. Right. So sing that song and let those churches connect with that song and then allow yourself to grow into writing for that community. But it starts with your community, so right there.

A

Yeah.

B

But also start with the right disciplines, deliver your stuff to multitracks, start to set up a profile, start to make sure that you're getting your songs registered and licensed properly so that people can find them and listen to them and do them. And so you have to keep the artistic side pure and the business side wise.

A

Yeah, that's exactly right. And that's really important to think through. I hear what you're saying there, and we definitely. I remember going through that. And I think if you write a great song that really ministers to your home church and is part of the. The breadth and the culture of your song, that isn't going to cross over, but it really ministers to your church, that's success in my mind. But I think if you say, if you write a church that a song. Sorry, if you write a song that's really great for your home church, but get frustrated because the church down the road isn't singing that well. I think you're missing the point there. If you're writing for your home church, I do think at some point, if you feel a call and a passion to write for the wider body of Christ, you do have to think about, okay, what does that look like? And even crossing denominational differences in style and musicality and so forth, these are things that you have to think through as a creator to get beyond that. But, yeah, to me, if you write a great song and it really ministers to your congregation, your home church, and it speaks your culture and who you are, that's success right there, 100%. But to cross the boundary, it's. You just have to start asking different questions, I think about 100% and how they sound and how they say, yeah,

B

we say all the time, your song can be extremely successful. Never leave your zip code.

A

And. Yeah, that's right.

B

And we believe that it's not a hyperbole. Like, if the person in your church that's going through the hardest time of their life hears your song, and it connects them with God and brings them peace and hope and deliverance. Then if it has a thousand streams or a million streams or a billion streams, it's done its job already.

A

Yeah, that's right. And I think. I think you mentioned this as well, but I think when that. When those songs are connected to the ministry, it's the ministry that takes those songs forward. You look at any. Any significant church that's releasing music now, and there's a bunch, it's not just because they got great songs. It's. It's because they have a culture and a. A teaching base or they have something deeper that is that people want to connect with their songs is just part of that. Right. And so I think you have to really look at songs. It's just one of the arms of the ministry, and God's calling you as a community to touch the world with. Well, great. Stephen, I love talking to you, man. We could do this for hours and hours.

B

And we will. We will at the conference. So.

A

So just to remind everyone watching right now, the boot camp is on the 10th of November in Austin, Texas. You go to multitracks.com and look at the conference tag there. You can find out all the information about the bootcamp. Steve and I will be there. There will be other people. We're having a panel, which I think I'm really excited about, which will have some artists and different people who've been in this space to kind of talk through, you know, their journey and some of the things that they've been through, a bit of their story. But we'd love to have you with us in Austin. We'll have time to really dig deeper into some of the things we've touched on today, but we'd love to have

B

you there and bring all your questions. Bring all your questions.

A

That's exactly right. And it will be a more intimate setting specifically for that, because we want to have time to really talk through your questions, talk about your scenario, and hopefully be able to resource you with some great tools and take it further from there.

B

Absolutely.

A

Stephen, great to see you, my friend.

B

It's always fun, and we look forward

A

to seeing you all at the Boot Camp. Come and join us. Thank you.

B

Talk to y' all soon.