How do you guys rate Worship Leader Magazine? Do you think it is worth subscribing to? What are the enhanced song CDs like? How many songs are on each CD?
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Hello, my name is Alastair Vance. I'm married to Liz and have three kids - Nathan, Noah and Katie. We moved from Ireland to make our home in North Carolina, USA in October 2007.
My aim with this blog is to encourage people in their christian walk, to share new and old worship songs, to study the bible and air my thoughts.
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it is pretty good…I do like the CD’s although I find that I usually own the original CD most of the songs are on.
I think worship musician magazine is the best one out
Having subscribed to Song Discovery from its inception, I’ve just decided to STOP getting it. I used to glean a song or two for use from a volume…but recently, they’re just not giving me helpful or useful material.
And Worship Leader Magazine, in all honesty, hasn’t been too helpful either. I wish them well, and don’t know of any alternatives, but I don’t find myself saying: “Me new copy of Worship Leader! Man I’ve got to read that now!”
But you should probably subscribe for a year and see what you think.
i agree with Mark…. i’ve had a subscription to SongDiscovery for probably 5 years, and i’ve just decided to cancel my subscription. i also “like” one or two of the songs on a disc, and rarely have time to sit down and thumb through the mag. so its not cost effective for me to keep piling up volumes if i’m not reading them.
haven’t had any exposure to Worship Musician Mag…. maybe i should check that one out.
Ditto here. I haven’t cancelled it, but I probably will. Occasional good articles. Used to get a song or two from each CD, but they seem to be getting out of touch with real-world churches. I actually started reading some of the fine-print on the CD…noticed that there was one guy on the committee that picks the songs for the CD, and both months he was on the group, he had songs on the CD. Hmmmm.
Bottom line, it seems to be becoming the “CCM Magazine” of worship leading. Probably not a good thing.
I do enjoy Worship Musician and Christian Musician magazines, both from the same publisher.
I’ll echo everyone else. I’ve had a subscription for two years but decided not to renew this year. My comments are the same as everyone else’s here.
WOW! Wasn’t expecting this response from everybody at all. Think I’ll pass on the subscription for now. Thanks for your help!
Hey Guys,
Great feedback. Thanks! I will share this with our Song Discovery Editor who listens to about 1000 songs every listening cycle to get down to the final 30 or so that go to the Board. To dispel any concern regarding getting on the CD, no one vote (including my own) can sway a panel, nobody can vote on any song which comes out of their own church or they have any bias, and the board switches every month – including often moving from regions throughout the US. We work hard to make sure the magazine are both must reads and must listens, but welcome any and all of your input to make it better for our readers and for those who are ready to give us a shot (or another shot). I would love to hear from any of you directly on specific feedback just so we can improve – our primary goal is to equip the churches we serve (approximately 45,000) so we want to be in touch!!!!
Thank you all.
Julie Reid
Executive Editor
Worship Leader Magazine
Julie…I would be happy to explain my thoughts on the magazine…and I have been working on a post for that on my blog. I will let you know.
[...] few months ago Alastair over at Live To Worship asked the blog world a few questions – How do you guys rate Worship Leader Magazine? Do you think [...]
[...] Leader Mag wants to hear from YOU a few months ago, some of us got into a discussion over at Live to Worship regarding our takes on Worship Leader Magazine and SongDiscovery. The executive editor found our [...]
I just commented on this over on Mandy’s blog, but I’ll cross-comment here for posterity:
“My 2¢, I’ve been a subscriber for a long time, and I’ve always enjoyed reading and hearing what’s new this month. I can mainly think of what I would like to see LESS of, therefore providing more room for the other stuff already being produced.
I would like to see fewer “big name” artists on the CD. Like Leeland was on the CD last time around. These guys are going to get the big advertising push necessary to make us all aware of them anyway. Feature more of the “small time” signed artists, and independent artist.
Same thing with the magazine. Let CCM cover the “big time” worship leaders that everybody already knows about. If you want to interview them fine, but don’t forget that we’re interested in what else is going on in the churches around the country. I miss the worship leader interviews, which is part of the reason I started doing them on my blog. I want the coverage of the next big thing alongside that little small thing over there that no one but God has noticed yet.”
[...] Leader Magazine: PART 1 (the question) A few months ago Alastair over at Live To Worship asked the blog world a few questions – How do you guys rate Worship Leader Magazine? Do you think [...]
Hey Jeff,
As I mentioned about 30 songs go to the Board, whatever gets rated the highest gets on the CD. About 60% *up from about 10% when Phil took over several years ago, are indie’s so our heart is definitely there! We work hard through our social network (free) http://www.songdiscovery.com (see community) to find songs, and put them on the CD, as well as any SD subscriber can send in as many songs as they like to our offices for a chance to get on the CD which we distribute to churches. Every CD varies in terms of the number of signed and indie artists, it depends on the submissions that cycle, and what the votes are. All high and low votes are automatically kicked out of the process, and then the average of all combined votes the top 12 get on – whoever they are.We serve 20K churches with Song Discovery I think its awesome when we can expose some of those churches who maybe aren’t as progressive in their musical styles to a band like Leeland, maybe they wouldn’t hear a song that they do in their normal listening like you would; but through Song Discovery they get exposed to many different styles. The CD is somewhat psychotic after all because of the varying styles and approaches to worship – but that is also the beauty of the worship we present.
If you would like to see more about our criteria for getting on Song Discovery go to our http://www.songdiscovery.com and look at the five criteria, that should help explain it better as well.
Phil Sillas is a songwriter and worship leader and has helped to develop a process which really is geared towards helping church leaders get better access to the CD than we’ve ever had before.
Thank you so much for engaging me….please feel free to email me directly at: editor@wlmag.com
Julie
Hey – pardon the copy/paste comments … since this is going on multiple blogs, I thought it would be easiest:
Hi Mandy,
Great stuff … ya know, I”ve been a subscriber to Worship Leader Magazine for as long as I can remember. I’ve been a SongDISCovery subscriber since it was launched. I’ve been privileged to have one song I published “picked” for a SD issue, and I “bought” a spot on another issue – a $2500 mistake. (I guess that song, “You Are Faithful”, by Jason Wallis, didn’t connect, at least, based on CCLI usage).
I know Julie and the team are reaching out. They have great hearts of worship. Phil does a great job, and my participation in one of their recent “SongDISCovery” panels as a writer was educational, and well .. humbling at the same time.
I think it’s awesome they are reaching out .. I’ve not blogged about it, but maybe I’ll throw my voice in there, too … since so many of our readers are the same.
I launched TheWorshipCommunity.Com about 1 month prior to WL launching SongDISCovery community. The two sites don’t have the same objective, and I think are complimentary, but I’ve had no success in really trying to connect the two. It’s a struggle, because you feel that the “dialog and community” between worship leaders that is happening our our blogs and TheWorshipCommunity.Com would be an AWESOME asset to those worship leaders, yet you don’t want to come across as competing or trying to “steal” members or traffic at the same time .. but then again, that doesn’t make sense, as the SD community is more of a “myspace” type community where you post bulletins, upload songs, etc.
Even then, you’ve got mega names like Paul Baloche and Mark Roach, etc., who will always dominate those charts, etc.
Bottom line … I think it’s awesome they are reaching out. I don’t find a whole lot of content these days in the mag that hits home for me, or songs on SD .. but my favorites in the mag are the articles about how songs were written – the story behind the songs, etc.
They used to do this “local edition” thing, I was the South East USA worship leader for a year, but I only got “interviewed” once the whole year (I guess I should say we ALL only got one interview) … it was interesting, ’cause I liked hearing from every day worship leaders, what they were doing, etc., .. .kinda like our “video worship confessionals”, etc.
That’s my $.02 …
BTW – I am attending their National Worship Leader Conference in Austin, TX … couldn’t make it last year, but wonder if anyone else is going?
For the Kingdom,
Fred
[...] product, “SongDISCovery” is buzzing in blog world. It all started back in January when Alastair posted a question about it, and received a response from the Editor, Julie Reid. Today, it seems to [...]
[...] morning Alastair (the original blogger) emailed me and the other commentors on his original post from a few months ago to let us know that Julie from Worship Leader Magazine had commented on his [...]
[...] their product, “SongDISCovery” is buzzing in blog world. It all started back in January when Alastair posted a question about it, and received a response from the Editor, Julie Reid. Today, it seems to [...]
[...] Source of comment: Live to worship [...]