Christian Worship: Playlist is the successor to HymnSoft

Christian Worship: Playlist is a flexible and practical solution that will work for the broadest number of congregations possible, requires only a minimal level of computing resources and technical skill, and avoids obsolescence by making use of reliable existing software.

Many congregations, my own included, have relied on products like HymnSoft to lead congregational singing in the Sunday service. Christian Worship: Service Builder will offer an optional, add-on product called Christian Worship: Playlist as the successor to Hymnsoft.

It is not a feature-by-feature update to HymnSoft, rather it is a new product with a different approach to solving the particular technical problem that HymnSoft had set out to solve. At the heart of the solution is encoded audio.

Encoded audio is an audio recording in an MP3 or M4A format. In this format musical attributes like key, tempo, and instrumentation cannot be adjusted. That is because encoded audio is a recording of a real musician playing the music through a high-quality digital instrument. This is in contrast to sequenced audio, like MIDI, which is a set of digital musical instructions. With sequenced audio, it is possible to make adjustments to key, tempo and instrumentation, but the musical performance can feel mechanical and sound artificial because it lacks the human element of playback. 

MIDI is a very powerful system, but because it is technically challenging, because it has a very limited market, and because copyright holders are extremely reluctant to grant digital permissions for MIDI distribution we have moved away from MIDI as a technical solution in the successor to HymnSoft.  Therefore, Christian Worship: Playlist will offer only encoded audio.

So, how will Christian Worship: Playlist work? The software will integrate directly with your Christian Worship: Service Builder worship plans. Christian Worship: Playlist will generate a set of encoded audio files based on the music you have scheduled for a particular service. You can customize the number of stanzas in a particular hymn and can select organ or piano recordings. 

After creating the service, users will download a zipped package of the relevant encoded audio files for each service to be loaded into the playback software of their choice, such as Apple Music, Windows Media Player, or other audio players. The device used to play the service music could be a computer or a mobile device connected to the church’s sound system and does not need to be connected to the internet during playback. Other options include connecting the computer or mobile device to the AUX IN jack on a digital organ to play through its speakers or to a standalone powered speaker..

This new approach will require an adjustment by many, but we have concluded that this approach makes the best use of our resources and provides a solution that reaches as many as possible. It will be a flexible and practical solution for making use of the Christian Worship suite.

Christian Worship: Playlist will launch in 2022 after the main launch of Christian Worship: Service Builder targeted for late 2021.