So why have I been quietly calculating my next move?
First, some details on what’s different about bingbit.
- Old: Liturgical music publishers charge a per copy license for music and separate the licensing from mechanical reproduction: costly.
bingbit: Parish Licensing Program allows music ministers and worship leaders to purchase a combination copy-limited piece of music and an annual license to perform the music: much cheaper. - Old: The same liturgical music publishers charge a monthly fee for publications to make suggestions for songs to play on a given Sunday (songs out of their library, more often that not).
bingbit: The unique sharebit (FREE) resource offers suggestions from many publishers (including, but not limited to bingbit). Ideas for this resource are contributed and managed by the community. - Old: Publishers are often forced to focus on the business and the marketing much like major music labels are.
bingbit: Focuses on the liturgy and on the music. We don’t focus on bottom line and management of overhead.
Sharebit is free, and each bingbit song on the annual Parish Licensing Program costs $0.99. That’s less than a dollar. Make all the copies you need for your musicians. Play the song as many times as you need. Renew it if you need it next year. All of the music is downloadable as a PDF lead sheet and many titles already have recordings (if you need some help learning it).
Sharebit is in alpha stage right now. I hope to have a public beta version when things around my parish get started up in September, but I’m waiting on a few functions to be integrated. The public bingbit site is still missing some major graphical components but I hope to launch it around the same time.
With everything going on, it’s been hard to manage development of these two properties. It’s been hard enough to just get a few songs onto the bingbit store at lulu. In fact, I’ve turned over all of the functional development to my friend Jonathan, who has also been quite busy with his own work.
So you’ve got my whole plan now. Not much I can do to stop myself now, huh?