Rackets

Dead flies in perfume makes it stink,

and a little foolishness decomposes much wisdom.

Ecclesiastes 10:1

racket (rak'it) n.

1.  a noisy confusion

2.  exciting social life or revelry

3.  any dishonest scheme or practice

4.  an easy, profitable source of livelihood

My father used to use the term "racket" to describe any venture or business that aimed to unnecessarily remove money from his pocket to theirs.  There were times when legitimate businesses were on his racket hit list, because of the nature of their dealings.  This morning, I came upon a new racket that I was only partially aware of, and my first reaction was disgust, then sadness.

I am the Music Director at a medium size church.  We have offered traditional mainstream worship at two services on Sunday morning, but are experimenting with ways to change one of the services into a more informal setting.  A month or so ago, the Christian Education Director and I led the worship service while the pastors were at conference, and we used a mixture of praise choruses and songs that were a bit more contemporary and necessitated us to print the words in the bulletin.

These days, you must have a copyright license to print words in your church bulletin, and my church has had one for several years from the largest company in the business (the original company in that business, actually) and we pay about $290 a year for the privilege of utilizing those words outside the printed hymnal.  All was well in worshipland until this morning, when my boss sent me a letter from the conference, informing us that this one company did not actually have the rights to all the songs in the hymnal.  No, two additional companies are now in existence, and the rights to all of the songs in the hymnal are spread across these three companies.  Ergo, to be in compliance to print the words of all of the songs in the hymnal and two supplements, one would have to have a license from all three companies.

After reading the letter, I went online to do a little research.  Company A (the original company) charges $290 for a church our size for a one year license.  Company B, one of the newer boys on the block,  charges $249 for a mid-size congregation, or $15 for one piece/one Sunday.  Company C would lift $250 from our pockets annually (+ $95 if we podcast), $95 for a single event (up to one week in length), or $30 for a single use license.  Therefore, if we wanted to print the words in the bulletin of all the songs in our own church's hymnals, we would have to shell out about $789 a year. 

It appears that my job description just got a little lengthier, as I will now have to check the song titles that I want to print against the catalog of our license provider, to see if they cover that particular song.  If they do, great.  If they don't, we can't print it.  In the wake of this economy, that is the only choice we have.