Creating a worshipper's iPhone app

[Namek Kural]

Hi there,

I have been a christian worship leader for about 1-2 years and I wonder I there is any iPhone app that can show lyrics and chords in a way it could replace regular song sheets, offers live playing support for switching songs and of course looks sexy
This is also about usual musicians not just worshippers.

I've gone through the App Store several times searching for this and since I don't think there is an app like that I want to share my idea to an iphone developer who wants to really earn some money I think this is going to be big and if you can code, but don't have an idea, this is it!

This app is not about hard work but about a great idea (which I didn't post yet )
If you're able to create a basic iPhone app including a little bit of accelerometer work then you're the person I am looking for.

Jonathan

EDIT: I'm a designer, so don't worry about a gorgeous user interface
EDIT2: Take a look at SongSuggest, beautiful, feature loaded but stopping where my app idea starts!

 

[LostLogik]

Mysongbook is the closest I've found but it needs more work. Sadly I think the dev has called a halt to that though.

 

[Batsirai]

Business Case

Hi Jonathan

I am one of the founders of worshipapps.com (makers of songsuggest)

#1. Thanks for the compliment regarding SongSuggest
#2. The issue of lyrics and chords.

Your first challenge/question will be - will you get legal permissions to display lyrics and chords.
If no - then you should - even if nobody comes after you. As a christian you have to ask if you are honoring the Lord and the songwriters who make their living off songs.

If yes, you will get permission. Then you have to look at the business metrics - it will cost you thousands of dollars to get permission to display copyrighted material. To make the app profitable you will be charging quite a high price for the app. If a 20 song music book costs upwards of $20, imagine an app with 650 songs (as SongSuggest has).

Another reason not to do it, is usability - will you actually be on stage reading lyrics or chords from your iPhone. Carefully scrolling with your finger between chords strums... and if you could... would that be just a weird look to the congregation... flicking your phone every 30 seconds during a song, squinting to see the chords above the small lyrics...

Believe me we have thought long an hard about this, and our interim solution was to allow users to search online for lyrics and chords. We may be partnering with a company that has legal lyric display rights... so stay tuned. But usability is still an issue.

Love that you are thinking about ways of helping worship leaders with tech solutions... if you wish, send me links to some of your work - maybe we can create something together...
Send us a note: http://www.worshipapps.com/contact-us

In the meantime, get SongSuggest - cause while its not meant to be a chord book... it certainly helps thousands of worship leaders pick great songs.

 

[Namek Kural]

I'll post a quick update on this because I am working on this application that I was talking about.

I have found several ways to make it easy to get your chords and lyrics while playing the guitar or piano without even touching it but I didn't try it out yet so I'll post some more of this if it really works.
The next issue is licensing, which is important but I found a way to solve this problem. I have chosen to use all my existing "Songbeamer" lyrics and chords. This might not be a solution to most non-Germans because Songbeamer is mostly found in German churches.
If I'll provide an opportunity to get your Songbeamer-files into the iPhone app, it's all on you if the licensing fees are being paid. Our church has a huge library of Songbeamer-songs, and so do others.
In addition you can make your own song-files if you don't already have that many.

I'm pretty sure that this app is going to work, although I'm not sure if there are enough people to buy the app so I get in balance with the 99$/year for Apple.

We'll see... the development is in the works and it's looking very good so far. stay tuned.