In contemporary worship music, few names carry more name recognition than CCLI. For decades, its Top 100 list has been a trusted measure for identifying the songs shaping the contemporary church–something like a Billboard chart for worship. But in September 2024, with little fanfare, CCLI removed the long-standing list of user-reported top songs from the navigation pane (it’s still available with a few additional clicks). In its place under the “CCLI Top 100” link is now a different list: the one that used to be called the “Popular Songs” list. One trademarked name, two different lists. 

Despite the confusing choice to use the same name, these two charts are based on wholly different datasets and methodologies. The change raises pressing questions about how a song’s popularity is measured. While the content of the lists undoubtedly overlap, the differences between them may tell contrasting stories about popular worship music that matter to the church and the scholars who study it.

For years, CCLI has been an important resource in understanding contemporary worship music through its Top 25 and Top 100 song lists. While the reports have been retrospective indicators (published to reflect the prior six months of use), these lists have provided scholars and worship leaders the most up-to-date glimpses into what songs are being sung in many churches. Even though they have been useful, there’s been a growing sense that these lists do not fully capture how these songs are actually used in worship or their impact on worshippers in congregations. ¹Jonathan M. Ottaway, “‘I’ll Bring You More Than a Song’: Toward a Reassessment of Methodology in the Study of Contemporary Praise and Worship,” Religions 14, no. 5 (May 2023): 680, https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050680. Matt Sigler has probably been the clearest about the limitations in repertoire studies and the use of CCLI in his 2013 essay. See Matt Sigler, “‘Not Your Mother’s Contemporary Worship’: Exploring CCLI’s ‘Top 25’ Lists For Changes in Evangelical Contemporary Worship”. Worship 87: 445–63.

Nevertheless, CCLI data remains a valuable tool and many people use it. Books like The Message in the Music (2007) — one of the first substantial repertoire-based studies of contemporary worship music — have relied on it to explore the theological and musical aspects of contemporary worship.²Robert Woods, Brian Walrath, and Richard J. Mouw, The Message in the Music: Studying Contemporary Praise and Worship (Abingdon Press, 2007). A steady number of academics and practitioners continue to rely on CCLI Top song lists to explore similar themes. This is evidenced by the many articles published in major outlets like Worship Leader Magazine and Christianity Today that rely on CCLI as their data source. In essence, CCLI’s top song lists have functioned as the closest thing to a “Billboard chart” for contemporary worship music. 

New tools, like Planning Center Online (PCO)’s week-to-week planning chart, offer intriguing possibilities to track new trends, such as how a song’s popularity shifts compared to the same week in the previous year.³Planning Center suggests the data is a good sample with 55,000 churches using Planning Center at the time of posting in June 2019. As of Jan 4, they self-report 80,000 churches using the service. https://www.planningcenter.com/blog/2019/06/the-new-songs-page (accessed Jan 2, 2025). Additionally, PCO’s auto-reporting feature holds the potential to provide real-time insights. But for now, these data reports have not been made available to the public. More than just for studying the content of popular songs, CCLI’s Top song lists have been a valuable tool for identifying trends in the church. It also remains unclear who or what churches these Top song lists represent. While CCLI data is still a helpful proxy, questions remain about which pews (or chairs) it actually represents. Does it more accurately reflect the 20,000-person church in Texas or the 50-person church in Vermont? A significant and recent change in how CCLI creates the Top song list aims to address this.

CCLI’s roots go back to the mid-1980s with StarPraise Ministries, launched out of Bible Temple (Portland, OR). At inception, StarPraise provided blanket copyright licenses for churches. It also curated songs for churches through binders and seasonal updates. By the time CCLI launched in 1988 under Howard Rachinski and the team, it had shifted from directly curating songs to letting churches drive the process through usage reports. That is, instead of CCLI staff choosing which songs to promote, CCLI harnessed their copyright license reporting data to highlight what was already most popular in churches. 

However, CCLI has always played an active role in shaping its Top song list to reflect church usage and align, importantly, with royalty distributions. According to Rachinski, the early CCLI top song lists were weighted by “fixation activity,” with more weight given to long-term uses like songbooks or arrangements than short-term uses like bulletins. Notably, church size also served as a multiplier to ensure proportional representation in royalty distribution.⁴Howard Rachinski, digital correspondence with Adam Perez, January 5, 2025. While every church initially reported its usage, CCLI eventually adopted a sampling method, collecting data from selected subscribers during six-month reporting periods.

Major shifts in CCLI’s methodology and operations have influenced its data analysis and reporting over the years. Here are a few examples:

1993: SongSelect launched, giving churches access to songs on floppy disk

• 90s/early 00s: SongSelect went online, adding resources like lyric sheets, chord charts, and lead/vocal sheets. 
• 2011: Fixation activity reorganized
• 2014: Global agreements expanded CCLI’s reach internationally
• 2016: CCLI was acquired by SESAC, a leading, global music rights organization (SESAC is currently owned by Blackstone, a private equity firm)

With these developments (among others), CCLI’s song database and licensing systems have evolved, meaning the data behind its lists has never been completely static. As CCLI has expanded its repertories, resources, and regions, its Top song lists have reflected distinct seasons and varying samples, influenced by the limited and uneven reporting of its users. 

In the last 6 months, two big changes have reshaped the CCLI Top 100 song lists: 

1. Weekly Updates: The traditional bi-annual “CCLI Top 100” list on SongSelect has been replaced by a weekly updated list (formerly the “Popular Songs” list). This shift, launched on September 23, 2024, uses only SongSelect download data to rank songs and create weekly Top 100 lists. Note how this functions very differently than the previous Top 100 lists, which were based on six months of church reporting (April–September, October–March), weighted by the size of the reporting churches, and tied to royalty payouts. The new SongSelect CCLI Top 100 song list is no longer tied to royalties or reporting but attempts to offer a more immediate snapshot you might expect to see on a streaming service like Spotify or a Billboard chart.
2. Quarterly Reporting: The traditional six-month royalty payout period has also recently transitioned to a quarterly reporting period, aligning with traditional business standards for financial reporting (the last bi-annual report period was October-March 2024). While this data is no longer the basis for the CCLI Top 100 list (as published on SongSelect.CCLI.com), it is still available on www.worshipfuel.com and a link is available in the fine print at the top of the new CCLI Top 100 page. We anticipate that all past published six-month lists and future quarterly lists may be made available here at www.worshipleaderresearch.com. 

While the new weekly CCLI Top 100 list offers possibilities, it is worth remembering that no single resource can fully capture the realities of worship across churches or in any one church. For researchers, the reason for the shift raises a number of questions. What market forces are driving this innovation at CCLI? With companies like MultiTracks offering competing resources, it may make sense that CCLI is aligning its resources with the broader music market trends of its parent company. Still, CCLI’s new approach to its Top 100 list marks an important change in understanding the music shaping our congregations.