Hey, We Love Your Music!

We’d love to invite you to play for our Sinai Sessions

The basics

• We don’t charge any money for our Sinai Sessions.

• We distribute all final recordings and split all royalties 50/50 with you.

• We use our own team for filming and editing and cover these costs.

• We recommend you arrange the Sound Engineer to ensure the sound you require.

• We prefer to film at a church local to you, ideally the church you attend (but we know this isn’t always possible)!

• We ask that you perform one original song and one cover.

• From setup to pack-down a session typically takes between 5-7 hours.

• Sessions are released approx. 6-8 weeks after filming.

The Details

• We see our Sinai Sessions as a collaborative effort and love to work together as much as possible. We’ve found that this works best when we handle everything on the visual, marketing/promotion and distribution side of things, and leave as much of the audio to you, after all we want you to be happy with the final recording - we then handle the mastering.

• For distribution we use a company called Stem, we’ve been using them for over a year now and love how they work, best of all they handle all royalty splits meaning that you aren’t dependant on us to receive your share. Instead, all the money automatically goes straight to you through Stem’s platform, and also provides you with all the same data we have access to (an example of some of this data can be seen below). All sound recording royalties will be shared 50/50 between yourself and us, we will own the mechanical rights of the live recording. All compositional rights will be held by you and/or all relevant person(s) for the original song you perform, for the cover song we will ensure that these are correctly attributed to the original writers/composers of the song. The final video published on our YouTube channel will be monetised through our own channel where we will retain 100% of the advertising revenue on that specific video, any other uses of the song across YouTube whether by us or other parties will be monetised through Stem as per usual and included in the 50% shares outlined above.

• We handle all visual sides of filming with our own team and equipment. Before sharing the final sessions you’ll be part of reviewing the draft edits to ensure that you’re happy with how everything looks.

• We suggest that you arrange the Sound Engineer for the session - we want you to be satisfied with the final recording from the session and most likely you have particular people you can trust to get the sound you need. Since we cover our own costs for filming, travel, editing, and promotion we won’t cover the costs of this or a Mixing Engineer, although this shared input to the sessions is why we equally share the royalties. Both parties are putting money and time into this and so both should share in the outcome! If you are unable to sort this out then we may be able to help with this.

• If possible and if it’s suitable we’d love to film the session at the church you call home, we think that the church family is a really important part of our lives and so we love to include this in the video. It also ties in to our values of showing that the artists on our channel that many people look up to are still just regular people who a part of regular churches and aren’t superstars or celebrities! We also want you to be comfortable for the session so that you can focus on worshipping God and it’s also easier for us to come to you than ask you to travel to us. If we’re unable to film at the church you’re part of then we can work together to find a different, suitable location near where you are. Also, we’re not too fussed about how pretty churches look since we can film the session in an interesting way, so don’t worry if your church doesn’t meet in a ‘pretty’ building, we can usually find a space that has a nice feel to it that we can create a nice setup in.

• For the songs you perform we ask the following:

  • Bring your best, we care about quality and as our sessions grow we want to set the bar high.

  • Please try to refrain from doing ‘acoustic’ versions, our sessions are about showcasing your sound. For example, if you’re an electronic artist, show that in your session! (Also there’s way too many acoustic worship sessions already out there, we don’t want to be yet another one!) However, feel free to do an ‘alternate’ version of your song but again use it as a chance to showcase the kind of music you make.

  • No miming, pretending or depending on overdubbing in post! However, we are happy for you use tracks for various elements you need for the song much like many bands do for live shows. If doing this though, we suggest using this appropriate to your music, for example a rapper performing a song would perform entirely to track if they have no band, whereas for Lion of Judah’s rendition of Again and Again they had tracked just an extra synth line and a couple extra layers of vocal harmonies - still these were played to live on the day and were recorded before the session and are typical to how they play the song live.

  • If you need session musicians but need help sorting them we may be able to help but we can’t promise anything!

  • You’re completely free to play whichever song of your own you’d like to play, keep in mind that it can take up to two months for the session to go public so this can be great to tie into your own marketing plans of new material, we love to work with you on this so if you have an upcoming single that you think would work well then we can discuss release dates and other details in order to support your own plans. Alternatively, you may want to play older material that you know to be firm favourites from your fans and ours and feel that’s the best route for the session.

  • For the cover, we ask that it be a cover of either a well known worship song (new or old and this includes hymns) or of another ‘indie/non-mainstream’ Christian artist ie. an artist likely to be known by our audience. Have fun with the cover, take it and make it yours! There are a couple different ways to approach this, if you go down the worship song route we suggest either taking a song that you truly love to worship to and be creative in making it your own, or alternatively you can be strategic and cover a popular, current worship song that is likely to be familiar and relevant to most people but reimagined by yourself. With our close connections to Spotify, it’s fairly simple for us to pitch worship songs to them, especially when done in an original style. If you cover another ‘indie’ Christian artist, this is also an awesome opportunity to show people someone’s music you enjoy and show love to an artist who has inspired and influenced you. It can also be a great way of connecting with the original artist and their audience who may not know your music yet but being a similar style are likely to be potential listeners and fans of you. These are just some thoughts that may or may not be helpful in helping you decide what to cover. Our vision for the cover songs originated from a few passionate thoughts of ours, we wanted to help build more community between artists and help make a culture that honours original artists and songwriters by clearly crediting the original artist. We also love the freedom and excitement that many artists felt when they’re given space to create a cover and perhaps have the opportunity to approach worship in a new way.