Unleashing the creativity of the Church
A creative community for Christian songwriters, artists, and producers. A worship song library that allows filtering by usage rights, AI involvement, and more. A nonprofit that holds those songs in trust for the body of Christ.
"We shape our systems,
and then our systems shape us."
— Robby Valderrama
01 · The current system
The more Corporate America owns, the more incentive it has to keep optimizing what the Church sings around its own returns. Here's how the cycle actually works — one stage at a time.
CCLI — the Christian Copyright Licensing International that 250,000+ churches worldwide rely on to legally sing copyrighted worship songs — is a division of SESAC Music Group. SESAC was acquired by Blackstone in 2017 — one of the world's largest private equity firms. What Christians sing on Sunday is measured, monetized, and licensed through a system whose ultimate parent is a secular investment firm.
Christian labels — often owned by secular corporations — sign songwriters to short deals with debt-based advances. Signed songwriters are paid a lump sum upfront, but their songs must earn the money back before they see additional royalty — giving the label all the leverage. Signing means aligning with the label's commercial interests.
Tempo, chord progression, thematic breadth, and sonic profile are calibrated for streaming inclusion and megachurch and radio adoption. Marketing efforts focused on the churches whose CCLI reporting weights amplify royalty flow. Broadness beats specificity.
Worship pastors feel pressure to lead songs that are already resonating. It's hard to compete with the congregation down the street who's playing the songs churchgoers are already hearing on the radio and on Spotify. So they pay a "worship tax" to Corporate America to use those songs.
Royalty income flows to labels, publishers, and their corporate parents. This money is used to reward shareholders and to acquire more valuable Christian music publishing catalogs. Every year, the assets are worth more. Copyrights can eventually be sold to catalog funds — Hipgnosis, Concord, Blackstone, or a peer — where the Church keeps singing the songs and the shareholders keep collecting.
Because worship shapes theology, shareholder-optimized worship produces shareholder-optimized theology. Not because any pastor chose it. Because the economic feedback loop selects for it — one Sunday, one royalty check, one A&R meeting at a time.
The Church should be where the best ethics and the best economics collide.
— Robby Valderrama
02 · The new system
A parallel cycle where Christians write, a transparent library documents, and a nonprofit permanently holds — with support flowing directly to those who create. Six stages, one loop.
Christians, Congregations, and Christian-owned communities develop songs for the Church's actual needs. Christian writers — free from indebtedness to corporations — collaborate as the Spirit leads, writing based on scripture, pastoral needs, and prophetic insight. Christian-owned writing groups such as Spring Hill Studios' Writing Club provide ongoing support for writers.
Songs are registered on WorshipSongLibrary.com with full transparency. Who wrote it. Who owns the copyright. What corporations benefit. AI involvement (if any) via AIDcode.org. How to support the writers directly. Open for anyone to view.
Songs are marked Free To Use via one of two paths. The Song Stewardship Agreement is the primary path — it grants the deepest church-use protection and long-term accountability, and writers retain immediate commercial rights. Equivalent basic licenses like WorshipCommons also qualify a song as Free To Use — they grant the fundamental freedoms churches need without the additional stewardship layer.
Worship pastors discover Free To Use songs by browsing the Worship Song Library — filtering by usage rights, AI transparency, theme, church calendar, singability, and other criteria. Without paying a "worship tax" to Corporate America.
In WorshipSongLibrary.com, each song lists the writers, who can provide links to how people can support them directly. If they are a member of the Unleash PMA, they will receive a "Verified" badge to show they are an active part of the Christian community, not simply a songwriter collecting royalties from Christian songs. No corporate middleman. No royalty pool weighted by megachurch reporting.
When songs reach cultural-significance thresholds, the Song Stewardship Nonprofit takes publishing (writers still receive 80% of publishing receipts) and eventually copyright. Permanently held by the Church. Never sold to secular parties. Income funds creation of more Christian-owned songs.
03 · Why this is different
There are open-hymn projects, songwriter collectives, worship-song directories, and Christian music co-ops. Each solves part of the problem. None solves all of them at once.
Every song is documented via AIDcode.org before rights are ever assigned. As AI-generated music floods every catalog, the Church needs a defensible record of what is actually human-authored — and therefore actually protectable. No one else is doing this at the ownership level.
Once a song hits significance metrics, the nonprofit has the right to acquire copyright — permanently, at nominal cost. Copyrights held here cannot be sold to secular parties, ever. Corporate America can keep making offers; the songs stop being for sale.
Most alternatives stop at licensing or ownership. Unleash pairs the stewardship structure with a real creative community — Spring Hill Studios' Writing Club, Production Club, and Artist Club — where the songs actually get written, produced, and distributed. 30+ new worship songs are written in Writing Club every month.
Certification runs through the independent Christian Faith & Deeds Council. Contributors and vendors are held to a Statement of Faith and a defined ethical standard. This is not self-attestation — it is independent, church-rooted evaluation, with an appeal path through the Institute for Christian Conciliation.
04 · Voices in the conversation
Christian artists and pastors have been naming this tension publicly for years. What has been missing is the infrastructure to do something structural about it.
"When worship became commercialized and came into the industry… the ways of the world affected and changed and leaked into our Sunday mornings."
— Kim Walker"I don't think business has any place in worship. It's hard when we bring that kind of 'return on investment' to worship music."
— Anna Golden"I started developing this disdain for the idea of selling worship. For some reason in my heart, it felt wrong to be making a profit off something that was supposed to be a sacrifice."
— Gracie Binion"This is the question that kept me from making Christian music for so many years — because I didn't want to make a business out of worship music."
— Forrest Frank"What pushed me away from the Christian music industry was people writing worship songs knowing they're going to get royalties from a network of churches. I met quite a few people that had deconstructed and were still writing Christian songs and getting Christian checks."
— Cory Asbury05 · Meet the founder
From leading worship in Silicon Valley as a teenager, to a business finance degree and a founding role at a Biblically-based investment firm, to hosting a podcast on the intersection of church, race, music, and economics, to running a Christian music agency in Nashville — Robby Valderrama's story explains why Unleash exists in the shape that it does.
He never wanted to disaffiliate from Christianity. He never wanted to concede the adjective "Christian" to those who misuse it. Unleash is what happened next.
06 · Further study
People have been documenting this for years — with more depth, more research, and more historical context than any one landing page can carry. If any of what's here resonates, these are where to go next.
07 · Get involved
Unleash is a master brand over a growing ecosystem. Four sibling properties carry different parts of the work. Each is a door into the same house.
Founding donor campaign
Until now, everything you see has been “bootstrapped”. No investors or cash advances, just love for Jesus and His Church.
But getting Unleash off the ground — a Christian-owned platform, a stewardship nonprofit that can permanently hold copyrights, an independent certifying body, and the legal formation that binds them together — will take real capital to move our ecosystem out of beta.
We're raising founding donor support to make the infrastructure financially sustainable and legally watertight from day one.
Here's what founding gifts will fund:
Building the platform, the AI agent, the Worship Song Library, and Unleash Commons. The largest line because the software is what makes the mission accessible.
Twelve months of runway from the moment the nonprofit is formed. So the work continues even if year-one revenue is slower than modeled.
Two nonprofits, an LLC, rights agreements, bylaws, PMA structure. The paperwork that makes the mission concrete and actionable.
An independent audit — required to pursue ECFA (Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability) accreditation in year two.
Directors and officers coverage so the board is protected before its first meeting.
Founding donors are giving, not investing. There are no shares, no governance seats, no financial returns. The gift goes to the Song Stewardship Nonprofit (or to Unleash LLC in the interim, with a commitment to transfer once 501(c)(3) status is confirmed). What donors see in return is the Church-owned worship music economy itself — built, legally protected, and durable enough to outlast the founders.
This site communicates the vision of Unleash. Some elements described here are already live; others are in beta or in active development. Everything on this page reflects real intent — but not every piece is fully built yet.