Frequently Asked Questions

General Information

There are two purchasing options:
  1. A-La-Carte. You can purchase a single piece of music for the listed price. With the purchase, you receive all files available for the piece as well as permission to download, print, and share as much as you need.
  2. SLM Subscription. If you purchase our $549 annual subscription, you get access to “purchase” anything you’d like from the entire catalog of music for $0. In other words, you can download anything you’d like and have permission to download, print, and share as much as you need.

YES!  We want to make this as simple as possible!  There is only one username and password for access to the library catalog.

Please click the “My Account” and the “Forgot My Password” link.  The system will send you a new password.

Yes! We’re not here to nickel and dime you. We want to make it easy for your worshipping community to have the best possible experience.  We encourage you to share electronically and sing on a tablet but understand not all music ministries are there yet. Therefore we give you the chance to make photocopies for your entire music ministry.
We feel the liturgical music industry is an honest, trustworthy group that would use their subscription as it’s meant to be used.  Also, we continue to add quality music, so you wouldn’t want to miss out on our new offerings!
YES! We are member publishers of ONELICENSE and any time you report using our music, 30% of the royalties go directly back to the composer of the piece. A ONE LICENSE subscription is comprehensive, convenient, and cost-effective. Our rates are equitably and fairly based upon the average weekly attendance of your congregation. For more information about ONE LICENSE, please visit onelicense.net This license does not give the right to photocopy octavos or instrumental arrangements or parts. However, SLM gives you this permission to make infinite copies of the music!

Music and Text Information

ICEL texts are English translations of each of the Latin liturgical books and any individual liturgical texts in accord with the directives of the Holy See. These are the current texts used in the USA Lectionary for Mass. For more information, please visit “What is ICEL.” APC – The Abbey Psalms and Canticles texts (formerly the RGP – Revised Grail Psalter) were prepared by the Benedictine monks of Conception Abbey in Missouri. This translation establishes the definitive form of Psalms and canticles that will gradually appear in official Catholic liturgical books including the USA Lectionary. Among other rituals, future editions of the Liturgy of the Hours and the Lectionary for Mass (both several years from completion) will use this translation. Paraphrased Texts are original texts composed by our composers using modern language and idioms to try to capture the thought and essence behind the original texts (ICEL, APC, etc). Although not the preferred texts for use in Mass, paraphrased texts have been used for many years and were officially permitted in 2007 through the USCCB document, Sing to the Lord paragraph 158.

Lyrical – Psalms being set to music and sung (Merriam Webster Dictionary)

Psalm-Tone – melodic formula for singing the psalms and other texts in which most of the text is chanted on a single note (Merriam Webster Dictionary)

You receive a zip file of the choral score, any instrumental parts the composer has written, mp3s to share with your choir, congregational pdf for worship aids and projection. You DO NOT purchase these separately, it all comes in one file folder.

As long as the music is theologically, liturgically, musically sound, we do not turn away any kind of music. We let the Holy Spirit work through our composers and bring you their work. Therefore, we have a wide variety of music from traditional to contemporary, lyrical to psalm-tone and from just piano to full-orchestral settings.
Our music comes from an ever-growing network of liturgical composers! Many of whom are music directors themselves and understand the importance of desiring music that fits the needs of your choir(s).
The SLC Review Board, USCCB, CCD, ICEL, and the Archdiocese of Omaha. We also require our composers to do peer reviews of the work before submitting. This gives our composers an opportunity to grow in their musicality.
While we’d love to offer recordings for every single piece of music on our website, it is simply not feasible at this time since there are so many. However, we believe our daily psalms are easy enough to learn by ear that recordings aren’t essential.
As a publishing company, we are unique in that our composers “publish” their own music which enables them to retain 100% rights to their music and receive a higher-than-normal percentage of royalties (30%). As such, the are asked to engrave their own music. In order to submit their music to SLM, they must make it “print ready” for the website. Each has their own style, software and settings. We truly are “grass-roots” in our approach!
Yes! Part of the “grass-roots” nature of SLM is that pastoral musicians can contact the composer directly to request other instrumental parts. It is up to the composer to decide if they can accommodate the request.

Composer Information

We have an extensive network through the NPM composer forum, networking with other composers online and composer word-of-mouth. Our composers live all over the United States and also in Ireland and England! All have backgrounds in liturgical music ministry and have “worked in the trenches” as music directors (most still do!).
We’re excited to talk with you about publishing your liturgical music! Please visit SLComposer.org to learn more about the process.
We found in our research of other liturgical publishing companies, that the common pay for music is 10% and the composer DOES NOT retain any rights to the music (i.e. the publisher can change the title, key signature, wording etc at their leisure) and the composer has no say in it. The 10% is split between all the composers published in the hymnal, so the slice of the pie gets smaller and smaller each time a new composer and song is added. At SLM, we give 30% royalties which includes both A-La-Carte and SLM Subscription sales PLUS 30% of the royalties from ONELICENSE. Our composers also retain 100% rights to their music. They have complete freedom to do what they want with their music (such as publish it somewhere else) and are the only ones that can make changes to it.
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