What do you call a small group of guys trying to build a sheet music app?
A. Really Awesome
B. Really Crazy
C. Bob, Joe, Larry, Pete, and Bill
D. Stanza Music, Inc.
E. All of the above
See bottom for answer.
No, but seriously, I’m supposed to write the first update for Stanza. What can I say? How does one capture the enthusiasm and drive for this fantastic dream we are working towards? How do I portray our feeling of the necessity of this project? I think the best way is just to tell you the story.
The Beginning
For years, there have been murmurings among singers of the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite, that we need an app that could access all of the shape note songs. Imagine, whenever you needed to find a song, however obscure, you could open the app, search for it by title, first line, or author, and it would come up. Not only could you see where the song was, but you could also view and sing it easily in the app without needing to hunt down the book it comes from. Such an app would vastly improve the way we access sheet music. Due to the nature of the project, no one has tackled it…until now.
Although our ambitions go back years, Stanza Music as it is known today began as a chat. At first, this chat was dedicated to songwriting, music theory, and lame jokes. As our friendships grew, we discovered that some of us had been seriously considering building a sheet music app for years, and some steps had already been taken toward it. With the enthusiasm and support of the rest of the group, we began to feel that we might be ready to take on this challenge. We realized from the beginning that such an endeavor would be enormously ambitious, but as we discussed the complexities involved, we began to believe that it could be accomplished. Having delved into the quite extensive archives of our chat, I believe that we really became serious about building the app on December 5, 2022. We decided that the name Stanza would fit our app well, and in January of 2023 we organized Stanza Music, Inc. with the state of Missouri. At the end of January we met in Michigan to have fun, sing together, and discuss Stanza. We spent a lot of time perfecting this website and figuring out the best way to get your money discussing the project in general. We have now launched this website to share our dream with singers everywhere and to hopefully collect donations for building Stanza.
Why We Need A Sheet Music App
There are several reasons why we are building Stanza. One is convenient access. We want to feature as many sheet music songs as we can get permission to distribute. Will we have the largest collection in existence? Well, one can hope. There appears to be a large number of chats dedicated to searching for songs that are difficult to access, and we feel that Stanza would solve this problem. Also, those who love to sing will not have to carry a large collection of books everywhere. For those with access to a projector, the app will make singing from it easy. Stanza will provide access to an enormous library of songs from wherever you are. You will be able to create collections of favorite songs, youth or school songbooks, and songs for specific events such as weddings, funerals, singing evenings, etc.
The second reason we need the app is a bit more of a touchy subject. Smartphones have made it easy to scan sheet music and share it far and wide among friends, as well as create collections in Google Drive, Dropbox, or a similar service. According to copyright laws, the copyright holder has the right to be compensated for each copy of their song, and often this is not done. We are aware that there is a vast amount of technically illegal sheet music floating around, collected in cloud folders and on chats or simply in physical sheet music. Stanza would solve this problem by compensating each copyright holder for the use of their songs.
A third reason we have discussed is that we could potentially publish new songs on the app. However, we do not intend Stanza to be a platform where authors can self-publish. Our current thought is that new songs would go through a proofreading and editing process before being approved for Stanza, similar to the process for approving new songbooks. That being said, we do not know exactly how it will all work in the end, and at this time we are only looking for previously published works.
Challenges of Building Stanza
Make no mistake, building Stanza will not be easy. There are many complexities involved in making this dream a reality. Although the road ahead is long and somewhat unknown, we are stepping forward in faith that God will make a way. The most prominent issue is that of money. Developing a mobile app for both Android and iOS is a very costly endeavor. At this time, we cannot put an exact price tag on this project, but it will be a significant sum. To put it bluntly, the only way we will be able to build this app is with your donations. The more money you donate, the better the app is going to be. You can visit our donate page to help us out. Your donations will be used only for design and development costs; we at Stanza Music are not paying ourselves for the time that we put into the app.
Another challenge is getting permission from publishers to distribute their songs on Stanza. Anyone that has published a song can help us out by signing up via our Signup page.
We have discussed many ideas for the design of the app, too many to be able to describe them all. One of our concepts can be seen on the home page of this website. We don’t know exactly what the final version of the app will look like, but we intend to put your money into making it as user-friendly and convenient as possible. And speaking of money…
If we are going to distribute sheet music legally, the copyright holder of a song needs to be paid royalties for each use of their song. Naturally, this money must come from somewhere. No one wants an ad-based app, so we must charge a monthly or yearly subscription fee for the use of Stanza. The subscription will allow unlimited access to the Stanza library.
We are very enthused about Stanza and we hope you can catch a vision of this project as well. We will use this page to update you on how your donations are being used to build the app. We thank you for your support and we welcome your questions, suggestions, criticisms, and comments.
Answer: What do you think? Tell us in the comments.
66 responses to “Our First Post : The Dream”
Sound great!
This is an amazing dream for those of us who love to sing!! You have my support!
Awesome idea. Love that this will be legal!!!
Super enthused about this! I totally support y’all! Hopefully the doors keep opening for this to happen!
This sounds like a wonderful plan. I’m especially enthused about it helping to solve the illegal sheet music problem. Thank you for being willing to give your time and talents to this effort.
Great idea!
What an awesome idea! Support it, 110%
This will be awesome! I’ll throw some money down!
Great Idea guys!
This app will be amazing.
I love it and will be making a donation!
And I give permission for you to use any songs that God has inspired me to write.
God bless your efforts…
I have wanted something like this for a long time! I would like to help if you need extra minions.
Yes!!! I’ve had this same idea that something like this needs to be done!! I fully support yall and wish you the best!
I’d say the answer is Really Awesome! So exciting to see your dreams taking shape!!
Yes I would be very happy to be able to legally use songs for a fee and also happy that the authors will get compensated.
This is a great idea, how will this work if I access the same song 5 separate times? Will you be charged royalties for each access or once I access it once is it essentially mine while I’m subscribed?
And I think you should have a tiered subscription service, a cheap subscription for those who only plan to use 1-10 new songs/month with a limit to the max number of new songs they can access monthly, and maybe 1 or 2 more levels of subscription with the highest tier being for schools and youth groups where they go through large numbers of songs and would want near unlimited access. Otherwise I would fear you would end up paying more on your royalty fees than some of the subscriptions would cover.
👍🏼 Good plan!
Sounds really good. Hope it all comes together! I’ll be glad to try out the “beta” version:)
Wow! Very ambitious project. I’m curious whether you envision this as a collection of mostly “Mennonite” songs? Or are you hoping to include older hymns, Mosie Lister, Dottie Rambo, Matt Redman? Lol the scope here is huge. Best of luck guys!
Yes we are hoping to include everything. Getting permission no doubt will be a challenge for some but we will do our best.
Awesome.
Great idea!
Yes! I love to sing and listen to singing. I would definitely use this app. Thanks getting it together!
Great!! Go for it!!
I support you all the way!!
Keep up the good work.
👍🏼 I can see this being a very good thing. I’m old enough I do not enjoy singing off of a small screen but it seems like a good way to take care of the problem of illegal copies. It’s very difficult to find a song you love when the book is out of print and very few books are still around by that author/ composer. Thank You for your enthusiasm, courage to tackle such a big project, and all the work you have done and will do!
This has been a long time coming!
e is the answer
Genius!!!
Sounds great! It’s awesome that someone is willing to put in the hard work to make this happen. I’ll throw some money in too and be happy to help if I can!
Love what you all are doing. I have wanted to see this happen for years and it finally is, thank you very much for your time and effort and I will be using it
I love this idea! Courage to you all! I will definitely be using this app!
I would be interested in having a pay per song option which would include a porfolio of songs within the app that I have purchased and can access/print anytime.
You have a great thing going. If I had any skills/time to offer right now I’d love to 😀 . But I threw a little money down.
I’m in the mission and all my song books (most of them) are in storage at home. I could easily appreciate an app like this…
I’m going to go with “A”! I really like this idea and want to see it succeed!
Great idea !!!
I would support it! I think a yearly subscription would be in place to compensate the royalties
I can already see this will be next level.
Sounds great!!!
Go for it!!!
all the power to u guys doing this! keep it up!, iv been wanting somethin like this for years! and especially making it all legal and everything, i don’t understand it all but i love to sing so keep it up, and even if theres annual fee or something, totally cool, id b willing to pay! anyway this is rlly cool, i will love it, lookin forward to it too! …thanks guys!
It’s a great ideal and I hope to it’s fruition. I love in Brazil and here we deal with two languages. We need something of the same. In fact I’m involved in an embryonic effort at the same for us here.
A great idea, and I hope to see it’s fruition. I live in Brazil and am involved in a similar embryonic effort for us in the Portuguese language. Who knows, perhaps you will be able to give us some pointers for our project
I support this completely. The convenience of having these songs available digitally is huge. No one should expect this to be a cheap lunch. The song writers, hopefully, will be adequately compensated and not lose money from loss of book sales. Let’s give our support any way we can.
I support the efforts of your project!
This is real good! I also support it! Maybe it could be around 25-50 cents per song to download to your account, then can access your purchased files easily via the app? Also would simplify the royalties instead of a monthly/yearly subscription to pay? Thanks for doing this!
I very much support this project.
That’s really awesome 👌
Here’s a gander. Start with a website, then expand to mobile apps. Use a js framework that can be easily ported to native script https://nativescript.org/, and build a robust production pipeline.
One thing. You really should get a proof of concept, and a business model before asking for people’s money.
Love the idea! Support it!
Thanks so much for your efforts so far!
I had envisioned a marketplace with “collections” that would match books already in print, with similar prices…
Once a person was done with the “book”, they could put it back onto the marketplace, at current market prices, and others could buy it, or if no used ones were available, buy a new one, creating a new royalty fee/serial numbered file…
An awesome idea! I fully support this project!!
Am looking forward to using this convenient app….
An awesome idea! I fully support this project!!
Am looking forward to using this convenient app….
Thanks for all your efforts!
God bless you in your worthy effort! May we ever sing for God’s glory!
Very awesome idea! You have my support in it, I would love to have a tool like this!
Hey this is a great idea! Definitely support it!
Awesome! This will be HUGELY appreciated!!
This is Quinn. And as far as I know I don’t know you guys very well buy I am impressed with this idea! To be honest I hate spending money on apps and don’t have any that I know of that I have.. But if it wouldn’t be over 20$ for a year I would do it! That being said I like this idea and hope I can donate to the cause!
Hey I like the idea!!! One other thing I thought when I saw this was it would be great (eventually) obviously to have type set recordings to accompany the song for learning.
I am tickled to hear of this. I have been saying for years, it needed to be done.
I would be glad to pay a yearly subscription fee to have this app in my hand. Thank you, and i will be keeping up with your post.
Very good idea. I wish you good success, I love singing and will gladly pay a subscription to access an app like this.
Great idea!
this is awesome! Glad someone is stepping up to the plate and making this. Been needed and wanted for a long time!!
Would be glad to pay a subscription or app fee.
Years ago I made up a Vacation Bible School songbook and obtained the authors’ permissions. Was not too hard to do even in the pre-internet dark ages.
Cheers to those tackling this huge project! I support you 100% and glad to donate a little do re mi! 🙂
I fully support this idea and feel it is a very worthwhile thing to do! I’ve wished for years and especially when I was teaching music that there was just such a thing!