Hey everyone, last time we wrote to you was a couple months ago. December 31, 2025 to be exact. Since then we’ve released the long awaited Stanza 2.0 with some fantastic new features and other amazing stuff. If you haven’t updated to Stanza 2.0, you should go do that already.
The time has come, the time is now, for us to be like everyone else and justify a subscription price increase. Just kidding—we most certainly won’t justify it, because we definitely aren’t like everyone else. The incredible increase in value that you, our subscribers, have experienced since we launched with 100-ish songs available doesn’t need any justification. We are working daily (if you can believe that one!) to add new songs, new features, and new authors to Stanza. All this and we haven’t even succumbed to current trends and added AI slop features. Can you believe it?
On the author side of things, I (Rudy) am churning happily (well, usually happily; sometimes grumpily, other times over-tiredly, but always over-caffeinated-ly) away on getting authors and publishers enthused about this little project of ours. And working crazy hours prepping licensed sheet music for upload so you can enjoy singing it. Or just looking at it, if that’s your jam.
Kirby’s working on an amazing new personalized Discover page that makes discovering and exploring new songs you’ve never sung before a whole lot more fun. We’re building out sections to recommend new songs to you based on your viewing/singing history. And sections to spotlight newest songbooks and songs that have been added, as well as the newest collections. And even curated collections for you to scroll through. And let you show or hide sections based on genres, topics, or tags of interested to you. It’s going to be huge! And Kent, well, he rebuilt our admin panel to be so much better than it was before that we can go ham on uploading new songs efficiently and effectively. We are most excited about 2026 and all the added value you will experience throughout the coming months!
As of this writing, we have Capitol CMG Publishing onboard, which gives us access to the entirety of the Stamps-Baxter Music & Printing catalog (do keep us in your prayers, because that catalog alone contains well over 18,000 titles, and tracking down copies is not something to launch into lightly). Speaking of which, this year is the 100th anniversary of Stamps-Baxter Music & Printing Co., and we may make some great progress as a friend of mine (who also happens to own a copy of every book they ever published) is working on some special 100th Anniversary content including a podcast to talk about the history of the company, some interviews with people that worked for Stamps-Baxter, the importance of the company in the shape-note genre, etc.) and is enthused to work with us to make more of their songs available to our users.
Capitol CMG also administers roughly half of Squire Parsons’ songs and his family has given us permission to use the other half under their control. They are, and I quote, “excited [to have] another way to continue Squire’s legacy.” Capitol CMG also (if you’re getting bored with this value-added verbiage, bear with me; it is interesting) administers Dottie Rambo’s songs. And Ira Stanphill’s compositions. And Luther G. Presley’s songs. And many of M. Lynwood Smith’s songs. And songs by Joe E. Parks, G.T. Speer, Gordon Jensen, James B. Coats, Elmo Mercer, Adger M. Pace, Marvin P. Dalton, and so many other southern gospel composers. And the songs that used to be under Gaither Copyright Management are under their control, as well. And everything that New Spring Publishing owns from publishing the New Songs of Inspiration books. And thousands more titles and authors that I don’t have space or time to expound upon. John W. Peterson Music Company has decided to work with us and they are trying us out by licensing a handful of songs to start, so that’s enthusing. (He has written some very beautiful songs. Go check them out.) The Easter Brothers family has signed up in the last week. And R.E. Winsett & Sacred Selections is enthused about our platform and is in process of onboarding. Oh, and Hope Publishing Company is working with us, as well. And Srose Music Publishing is very interested, too. Jeffress/Phillips Music Company is interested, too.
We’re currently in talks with Music Services (administrators for songs by Mosie Lister, Albert E. Brumley, Daywind/Christian Taylor, Tennessee Music & Printing, SpiritSound, James D. Vaughan Music Publishers, and many more), ClearBox Rights (Stamps Quartet, Nelon Music Co., more Albert E. Brumley, Rusty Goodman, and many other writers and companies), and Hal Leonard (Ben Speer Music, Homeward Bound Music, Peer Music, BMG Rights, and many, many, many, many, many, many other titles that would be the most amazing ever to add to Stanza). I’ve also reached out to Elizabeth Drudge/Trevor Drudge with Echoes of Triumph, and Valerie Boese. Both of them have written many well-loved songs and would do quite well on our platform, so we keep hoping and praying that they all join and make their songs available.
Now, if any of you dear readers happen to be songwriters or song copyright owners and all this talk is making you feel left out, please contact us at support@stanzamusic.org, and we’ll be glad to strike a deal and get your songs added to our library. Stanza Music is the premier platform for discovering shape-note gospel sheet music, and by adding all the songs we possibly can we will become the premiere premier platform. We do have a professional music engraver/typesetter on-staff (that’s me, Rudy), so you don’t have to have your songs typeset perfectly before submitting them to us.
As you can see, and read, the value of this platform is steadily compounding. Almost like the interest on an overdue invoice that one has inconveniently forgotten to pay until the amount due is many times the original amount. But $5 per month for all this great value is a steal of a deal. Developing all these cool new features and adding all these amazing songs to our library takes a lot of time, and as the saying goes, time is money. $5 per month in this current economic climate is barely cutting it. As of April 1, 2026, our subscription prices will rise to $5.99 per month, or $59.99 per year. Canadians, we don’t get left out; our pricing will bump up to $7.99 per month and $79.99 per year. This is still a steal of a deal, so grab it while you can. You’ll receive all the same services and print credits you’ve always been getting, but our library of available songs will grow exponentially over the coming months.
As we continue adding more and more songs and swinging deals with more copyright administration companies, we may need to raise our prices again, but we will give you sufficient heads up to work through the stages of grief and offence and be happy for the immense value our app platform continues to provide for shape-note gospel singing enthusiasts around the world.
We’re doing what we can to help cut down on piracy and remunerate writers fairly and reasonably. When you purchase sheet music prints through Stanza, you are paying the writers and copyright owners directly and Stanza is just the distributor of the funds so you don’t have to contact each one to license copies individually. In case you wondered, we don’t keep revenue from printing (other than some fractured fractions of a cent here and there when maths don’t quite line up and payment processing fee percentages leave crumbs left over, but it’s not like we’re getting fat feeding off these crumbs from the master licensing tables). After payment processing fees get deducted by Apple/Google/Stripe, the remaining revenue gets paid out to the appropriate copyright holders. The more honest you are with reporting your print counts the more likely we are to keep adding copyright companies to our library. Our agreements are founded on a basic belief and trust that our subscribers are honest and paying for the copies they print and would never even entertain the thought of defrauding songwriters of the meagre royalties due to them. This is gospel sheet music we’re distributing after all; honesty goes hand-in-hand with the Gospel as I read it.
We would give it all to you for free, but then we’d need to run ads every 5 seconds to fund development and pay royalties, and that, my friends, would be a horrible, horrible experience. $5.99 is only one less Starbucks drink per month (depending on where you live, that is; where I live it’s about half a Starbucks drink), and it gives you access to over 7,000 songs right now, with thousands more in various stages of preparation and upload. Your Starbucks drink, on the other hand, doesn’t give you access to any songs, and the joy it gives you via the sugar and caffeine buzz is finite. Stanza can give you infinite joy every single day all month long, which, depending on the month, can be yours for as little as 19¢ per day. Just think of that—19¢ per day is peanuts for unlimited access to 7,000+ titles (soon to be 10,000+ titles, and after a while 15,000+ titles, and one day, the Lord willing, 30,000+ titles). February is a bad deal at 21¢ per day, but you’ll just have to sing more in February to get a better bang for your buck.
We are also working on licensing deals with Gospel Publishers, PrairieView Press, and Guiding Light Publishers to make more of their songbook publications available. Stay tuned for further announcements on this front.
And, as ever, we are looking for copies of all songs you want added to Stanza. We are a small group of humans, and our resources are somewhat limited, but our enthusiasm usually makes up for it. If you want songs on Stanza, tell us. We can’t know your minds from this far away.
Till next time,
—Rudy
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