For years churches have been streaming and podcasting the sermon.  Now many churches are taking the plunge and starting internet campus or simply streaming the entire worship service.  But streaming or podcasting is considered a broadcasting of the worship service.  The religious service performance exemption written into US copyright law does not apply to streaming or podcasting.  It’s also not covered under your CCLI license or any license you have from ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC.  If you want all the details on Copyright Issues for Webcasting a Religious Service, check out this white paper.  It’s a great resource and much of this post is taken from it.

So what are the options to this legally?

1. CCLI offers a church streaming and podcast license.  This license lets you stream any song in the CCLI catalog (about 200,000 Christian songs).  The license is limited to worship services only and you must already have a CCLI license.  The pricing is tiered based on your attendance.  It’s quite affordable.  Most church plants would fall in the $50 – $100 range per year.  The license does not cover the streaming of secular songs.  So if that is something you plan on doing, you may want to consider option 2.  You are also not allowed to charge for the stream or podcast (seriously who is doing that?).  There is no reporting required, which is a bonus.
2. Christian Copyright Solutions offers a streaming license called Worshipcast.  This license allows you to webcast every song in the catalogs of ASCAP, BMI and SESAC (over 16 million Christian and secular songs).  For churches under 500 in attendance the license cost $500 a year.  It’s more expensive, but covers a lot more songs.  Churches over 5,000 in attendance will have to do weekly reporting (Yuck!).

It’s worth keeping in mind that neither of these licenses cover the playing of pre-recorded music (think your iTunes playlist that you play during pre-service) or accompaniment tracks.  There is no blanket license for these so your best bet is not to use them or edit them out of your webcast.

Webcasting Photos

You’ll also want to take note of the photos you are displaying.  Yep, you have to have permission to show those too.  Stick to royalty free sites like iStockphoto to avoid this problem.  If you are showing a pic taken by someone in the church, you should technically get their permission to webcast it in writing.

Webcasting Video

Unfortunately the licenses above don’t cover this.  While you can get a CVLI license for showing video in service, it doesn’t apply to webcasting.  You have to get permission from the movie studio to do that.  And those countdowns and transitions you use to jazz up your presentation, those too are not covered for webcasting.  Either don’t film them or when you purchase them check the terms and conditions.  If webcasting isn’t included, you’ll need to ask for permission before using it.

Webcasting is a great tool and many churches are using it innovatively to reach more people with the Gospel.  Just be sure that you count the cost and obtain all the licenses you need to legally do it.  If I’ve missed anything or you know of other resources, be sure to let me know in the comments.