www.choralmusiclist.com

Having served as some sort of music/worship pastor now for almost 5 years, one of the joys of working with a church choir are the choral clubs. I was introduced to the Word Choral Club when I first started out. I had no idea what kind of music to use, what was out there, and how to sample music besides going to my local Christian bookstore to the choral music section. I found out that the local bookstore only carries a drop in the bucket of church music.

With the Word Choral Club, for $99.95 I would get 4 or 5 shipments a year with a box full of music--sheet music, choral collections, cd's, the works. At certain times of the year the boxes were themed, so usually in June/July it would feature all of the new Christmas musical and in November/December it would feature Easter. I went from famine to feast with the arrival of my first box. Ordering individual samples of what they sent you would have cost over $100 in the first box alone, so just on the basis of the music it was worth it. The added bonus that came with my annual membership was a certificate good towards a performance track--which, on something like a musical, runs $90. So, at the end of the year, I was really spending only $10 for a ton of music to sample.

Word Choral Club was only the beginning, because soon I joined the Lillenas club--another choral music club, with pretty much the same setup, just with different music. Now at Mount Olive, I found out that we subscribe to Word, Lillenas, Lifeway, and Brentwood-Benson. Yesterday I was going through the choral music library/closet and found two choral club boxes from last year full of music. As I have looked through I have noticed that I have a limited amount of storage space and an overabundance of old musicals and the like.

I took those old choral club boxes and walked them to the dumpster, only because I barely have room to store the music that we actually use, much less a bunch of sample copies. I also don't really have a good place to take them. It is not like I can take sample packs or old music to Goodwill. I thought to myself, wouldn't it be great if there was a site where you could get rid of this stuff--to sell it (and turn your trash into cash), or donate it to a smaller church somewhere starving for what you're either going to let sit in a closet or take to the dumpster. I did a search on Google and came up with one site that doesn't look like it has been updated in 3 years. That's when I registered www.choralmusiclist.com. As of the time of this posting, it is freshly registered, so nothing is up yet. What I envision is a forum where choir directors can unload music that they don't want or need. I hope to setup a simple forum where that can take place. I know that I am not the only person that could use such a place.