March Newsletter

New Look

In response to lots of user comments and input, the ShareSong.org site has been dramatically revamped to keep up with the growing needs and demands and to increase the speed and functionality of the site.  Check it out.  We’d appreciate any feedback you may have on how we can make it even better in the future.

The next project for the development team is to revamp the database to incorporate a user review system so that other users can quickly find the songs that they are looking for. 

 

New Music

We’ve now got 301 songs in the database with 88 being submitted in February alone.  It’s exciting to see them just keep flooding in, way beyond our expectations! 

It seems that more and more songwriters are submitting their work as they see that ShareSong.org is becoming something significant and that sharing praise and music freely via the Internet is the way of the future. 

Here’s a ‘quick’ run down of the material that has been posted this month.

1.     Johannes James has just submitted eight great new praise and worship songs from his album ‘Laud’.

2.     Grant Walker has submitted a beautifully crafted praise song based on Psalm 137 called “Where Could I Flee?” with a whole bunch more great songs in the pipeline. 

3.     Eric Virzi has submitted his song “Generations” based on Ecclesiastes 1:4-10.

4.     Jim Hroncheck (http://www.roundcheck.com/mcw) has submitted eight funky new songs from his album “Music for the Christian Warrior”.

5.     Garry Sherril (http://www.mp3.com/garysherrill) has submitted five beautiful reflective worship songs.

6.     New Song Music of New Song Music from Hawaii have uploaded 10 songs from their already popular catalogue written by William Paccaro and Esther Watanbe. 

7.     House of Praise Productions (houseofpraiseproductions.com) in New York have submitted ‘Let Me Find Favor’ and ‘Never Have to Say Goodbye’ by Donald Zanfardino & Salvatore Restucci with word of more songs currently being recorded that will be posted soon. 

8.     Robert Humphreys has submitted his song “Another Seed of Hope”.

9.     Back Draft Music have submitted another 11 songs now have 26 songs on the site.

10. Louanne Lee has submitted her beautiful song ‘Be Bold’.

11. Ray Watson (http://raywatsonsecretplace.homestead.com/index.html) has submitted “You Are the One” from his three CD collection and plans to offer many more in the future.

12. Award winning Christian Poet Joe Medrek (http://www.geocities.com/busybeever/) has submitted 11 songs which he has collaborated with other people via the internet (including Elton Smith of SongsOfPraise.com and Steve Popovich of FreePraise.com).  It’s a testament to the way the Christian Songwriters Community is flourishing on the Internet.

13. Graham O’Leary has submitted “I want to be Righteous Before You Lord.”

14. Tim Barber (http://www.kingdomworship.org) has submitted 12 bright new praise and worship songs. 

15. Australian composer Libby Beasley (http://www.ozemail.com.au/~puregold/) has submitted five songs off her album I See Your Glory which features 10 new Praise & Worship songs that “reflect the fresh move of the Holy Spirit across Australia”.

16. David Burden has submitted six new songs using the Finale Music Viewer Software which enables you to scroll through the song as the midi file plays and then print the sheet music if you like it! 

17. Three Legged Music (http://threeleggedmusic.com) have submitted six of their songs. 

18. The Praise Project have submitted three jazz-funk based songs. Check out House of Praise for the funkiest worship song I’ve heard in a long time.  Ron Kenoly eat your heart out! 

19. Don Chapman (http://www.HeartstoGod.com) has submitted two new songs.  “Be Magnified” is delicious and mellow with “Praise Awaits You” being a huge rock anthem!

It’s exciting to see more and more groups of people springing up around the place who work together to produce song to share with the world.  Bring it on! 

 

What other people have said

It’s always exciting when you get positive feedback for something that you’ve put a lot of effort into.  So, rather than blow our own trumpets, we thought we might let you have look at what some other people have said about ShareSong.org. 

 

I just spent an hour going over the site.  I'm feeling some little voice deep inside that is telling me there is a major revolution going on here.

On the surface it doesn't look like it's such a very big deal, but I think (I could be wrong) this could be the beginning of the end of the strangle-hold that the establishment has on the supply routes to the church.  Wouldn't it be something if God has found a way to sidestep the people who require that we give them our copyrights before they will use our songs!  Wow, what a great God...  and He's just so smart!

I am delighted to be a part of the revolution.

Lenny Smith

Author of “Our God Reigns”

New Jerusalaem Music

 

I have found this website very useful. It has also inspired me to have confidence in my own song-writing ability.

Carol Unwin

Bristol, England

 

As a worship songwriter, I'm very happy to see something like this come into existence. I'm going to begin submitting songs real soon!

Matthew Vohlmer

 

I think that the website is a brilliant idea. It encourages many people to listen to Christian music and to hear about our faith through the music. I also think that having the music available in sheet format is great.  I am planning to try and play a few of the songs with my church music group and possibly in some of our services. Thank you for all the time and effort put into this site, it is really worthwhile. Keep it going.

Kimberley

Suffolk, England                  

 

I have been hoping and praying that a third party (i.e. someone outside a record label) would start such a site.  Worship leaders need a reliable, unbiased source of praise and worship music without constantly having to pay for everything - chord sheets, leadsheets, etc.

Paul Borderkircher

RPJ Artists Group

http://www.rpj.org/

 

ShareSong.org is the Linux of Worship Music!!

Bill Cooney

http://www.mp3.com/artiste_bil

 

This is the most AWESOME site... how do you dedicate so much of your time to this endeavour?

I am completely impressed and enthusiastic about using these artists new songs.

Thank You for this wonderful site. I will pass this to other praise team leaders along the way.

Mark Oster
Lutheran Church of the Resurrection
Huntington Beach, CA

This is fantastic! I was fair dinkum blown away by the professionalism of the site. The resources you offer are outstanding. The amount of work that has gone into this site is phenomenal. There are A LOT of people out there that are really going to appreciate all this one day.

I say "one day" because at this stage I can see you have just begun your vision...  "Despise not the day of small beginnings". And this is hardly a small beginning! You are obviously dedicated and committed to the cause of providing worship resources for the Body of Christ. I commend your efforts with all my heart. Keep it up.       

I believe if you maintain this standard of excellence and service you will attract world-wide attention eventually and become a tremendous resource - I'm serious - I haven't found such a helpful site as yours.

Ray Watson
The Secret Place
http://raywatsonsecretplace.homestead.com/index.html

 

Promotion

It’s encouraging to see that we’ve now clicked over 33,000 hits to the SS site with 400 visitors coming to the site day.  

In an effort get the word about ShareSong.org out in the real world, you can purchase (at cost price) t-shirts, mugs and mouse pads with the new ShareSong.org logo on them from http://www.cafepress.com/sharesong.  It would be great if we could have t-shirts with ShareSong.org walking around at churches, and Christian conferences all around the world. 

Thanks to Christianguitar.ws for being ShareSong.org’s biggest referring link.  You can help increase the traffic to ShareSong.org by regularly voting for SS on Christian Guitar’s Top 50 by following the link from the new front page or by going to http://www.christianguitar.ws/top_list/in.php3?site=979160257. 

And of course, the best way to promote anything is personal recommendation.  If you believe in the vision of what we’re doing, we know you’ll tell someone about it. 

We’ve also added a comprehensive section on what songwriters you can do to promote your music on the WWW!  Check out the promote page on the new site. 

 

CDs

We’ve had a number of requests for CD copies of some of the work on ShareSong.org from people who are wanting to play the music that they find on SS in their CD player.  To this end, we have set up an mp3.com DAM (Digital Audio Music) CD which feature some of the songs that are hosted on http://mp3.com/sharesong. 

If you have music that you would like to host your songs on the Internet, we can post them on mp3.com/sharesong or you can set up your own site.

We plan to use mp3.com as much as possible for hosting of digital music files to keep the demands on our server (an therefore the long term cots) to a minimum.  Any money gained from mp3.com’s Payback for Playback Scheme and DAM CD sales will go back into covering hosting costs and development of the site.   

         

Community Development

The community development aspect of ShareSong.org is coming along well.  Small groups of people are starting to spring up in churches and other groups around the place to work together to prepare praise and worship music to be shared with the world. 

If you have unfinished work that you would like someone else to help out with, you might consider posting it on the ShareSong.org Writers Notice Board at (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sharesongwriters/files/).

Thanks for making it to the end of the newsletter.  Sorry it is so long, but t here’s just so much happening! 

Stay posted.

Blessings.

 

Marty Kendall

ShareSong.org Coordinator