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The deal as far as composers are concerned is that twofish provides you with a way to make your material available to a wider audience, and if you wish, receive payment when your material is used in public. We don't currently make any charge for composers using the site, though it's possible we may have to one day to offset storage and bandwidth charges. We'd obviously let you know in good time if that happened.

In order to ensure a good experience for people searching the site, we ask that you provide your material in the form of the set of files described below. We realise that a certain amount of effort may be involved in this, but we think you'll agree it's worth it.

Here's what we need:

  1. The sheet music in .pdf (Adobe Acrobat) format. Most people have the reader on their computers already, and this provides a reliable and widely accepted file format. You can make a few pdf's for free at Adobe's site, and some scanners can make them at the touch of a button. Windows users can also make pdf's with the free pdf995. Mac OS 8.x and over users should check out PrintToPDF ($20 shareware), and Mac OSX users have it built into the print dialogue, so there's really no excuse!
  2. The text of the song/hymn/anthem in plaintext (.txt) format. You also need to know what the title is.
  3. The credits as you wish them to appear, for both words and music. As part of the submissions process we ask you to confirm that you hold the copyright to the material.
  4. A word or two to descibe the subject of the song/anthem/hymn.
  5. You need to tell us whether you think a congregation could sing your song/hymn, or whether it's just for a choir or music group to sing.
  6. We'll need your email address, and some other contact details.
  7. You'll need to decide if you want payment for public use of your material, and if so, how you wish to collect that. To save confusion, we're limiting your options to the post or PayPal. For the latter you'll need to set up a business account, but it's not hard and is free. You can also indicate if your song is covered by the CCL scheme.

You can also offer the following, as an option (either now or later) :

  1. A brief note, for example 'oboe part available' or 'the second verse sometimes works well as a solo'.
  2. A bible reference. This can help people find your song as they're preparing an act of worship.
  3. A midi file. These are nice and small, and give people who can't read music an idea of how your material might sound. To make one you'll need some kind of sequencing program, and ideally a piano keyboard attached to your computer. Have a look at VersionTracker for suitable programs. Midi File Creator would seem to be a cheap option for Windows types. Mac users could try Midi Grasshopper.
  4. An .mp3 audio file. The free iTunes is probably the easiest way to make these from a CD. Otherwise, check out mp3 creator for Windows, or Audio Recorder for mac or just search on Google or VersionTracker for similar programs. We ask you to keep your files as small as possible (no larger than 500k please), just putting up an excerpt of your song, so as to save space on our servers.

When you've got all that sorted, you're ready to Add Your Music.