Dear church family and friends,
Over the last few years, we have written over 20 songs as an overflow of our faith and ministry at Mill City Church of Cayce. Some were written out of personal wrestling with sin and trusting Jesus, while others were written for our church family. Some of them will never see the light of day, but a few years ago, we decided to try a few of them as a part of our corporate worship. Without prefacing them as we introduced them, we watched many in our church respond positively to them. That is when we knew that a hobby of ours had become a part of our ministry.
Since then, many in our church have asked for these songs to be recorded (some having been very persistent (in a loving way)). At the beginning of 2023, we finally decided to take another leap of faith and made a plan to record them. We have never done anything like this as a church. Thus, we reached out to other churches, learned what we could, and began formulating a plan that will result in hopefully recording 8 songs, starting at the end of July and ending in August. God-willing, we will have 8 songs that we can begin putting on Spotify, Youtube, Amazon, etc.
After someone generously and quickly gave $5,000 to the project out of the gate, we realized we needed to have a God-honoring plan for dealing with all future money as it relates to getting it recorded and online. Raising money to record and any potential revenue from streaming services meant we had to wisely think through the financial side of all of this. After consulting others and considering the options, here are few decisions we made that were necessary:
We needed to make Mill City Music distinct from Mill City Church. We did not like the idea of commingling funds from any revenue that might come in from streaming services. Though it is unlikely that this album makes a lot of money (for example, 1K streams brings in about $3.52), there will be at least a little bit of money coming in. Churches are not meant to have "for profit" aspects of their organization, so this could have potentially added a layer of difficulty to the church that we did not want.
Matt and Spencer created a general partnership called Skyview Music. Streaming services pay out to songwriters (the two of us) and then to the label. Since we are not going to a label with this, we made a general partnership that would function like the independent label. This will keep the funds separate with the least amount of business paperwork. We chose Skyview because that is the name of the street where Matt resides.
We chose to record under the name “Mill City Music” even though it is separate. These songs were birthed out of our church, and while having two distinct organizations makes the most sense financially, we wanted to keep the name because of their origin story. Also, if these songs gained local recognition in our city, state, or even further, we liked the idea of showing where these songs came from by keeping the name, as well as the added benefits to our church that could come from that type of exposure.
If there is money, where does it go? As songwriters, we will get a check from companies like Spotify. We will treat that like income and give to the church as we normally do off our paychecks. The other portion of the profits from streaming will go to Skyview Music. The plan will be to use those profits for two main things: 1) ⅓ of revenue will be given to Mill City Church 2) The rest will be used to make future recordings.
If God decides to use these songs all across the country and more revenue comes in than we ever expected, we will have decisions to make on what to do with what is leftover. While that is unlikely, we will try to make that decision as wisely as possible.
We wanted to take the time to outline this so that we can be as above-board as possible. We are planning to raise an additional $8,000 to cover the costs of recording this album professionally by Archer Avenue Studios in Columbia (the full cost of recording is around 13k). From a financial perspective, we wanted you to know about what will happen after the album is recorded so that everyone can be on the same page. If you decide to give to this recording project, it will not be gifts given to the church. It will be given to the general partnership to pay for the recording of this album (more akin to helping us fund a Kickstarter project, not a |giv| project).
Please do not hesitate to approach us with any questions or concerns that you have. This is our least favorite part of doing all of this, but the “business” side of all of this is a necessary step in the process, and we want to be above-board in our approach before we get to the exciting part of recording. We wanted to address this before we start raising the 8k so that we can honor our membership commitment and fight against disunity or problems that could arise from any confusion.
We love you.
In Christ,
Matt Freeman and Spencer Cary