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On August 6, 2025, after several years of collaboration with and input from composers, musicians, and other stakeholders, the Unitarian Universalist Association released Sing Out Love, its first virtual hymnal.
What Is a Virtual Hymnal?
Sing Out Love is an online collection of hymns, songs, chants, and other multimedia resources available to subscribers, including Unitarian Universalist congregations and organizations, and others. Its revolutionary platform provides access to an ever-growing compilation of songs and related resources for worship and other programs—with the challenges of licensing and permissions removed.
How Much Does Sing Out Love Cost?
Unlike printed hymnals, Sing Out Love isn’t something you purchase. It is a subscription service available by monthly, annual, and three-year subscriptions across three tiers, according to congregation/organization size. For example, a congregation with fewer than 150 members will pay $240 for an annual subscription, or $648 for a three-year subscription. Honor congregations, who fulfill their Annual Program Fund pledge to the UUA, receive an additional discount.
The fees reflect an ethic of care and responsibility, including fair and equitable licensing fees for our artists, staff to maintain and update the hymnal, and hosting/technology fees.
How Does It Remove the Challenges of Song Licensing and Permissions?
One of the greatest gifts of Sing Out Love is that every permission to use a hymn is automatically included with your subscription. For congregations that have been wrestling with the limitations of copyright, permissions, and licensing, this removes an enormous headache and obstacle.
Is Accessibility a Priority?
It was a major goal from the start. Sing Out Love includes features to increase accessibility for people with low vision, color blindness, other visual impairments, and dyslexia. The hymnal includes Braille Ready Files for people who use the Braille system. If you find something that isn’t functioning for your access needs, please let us know. We’re really committed to making this as accessible as possible.
What Additional Features Does Sing Out Love Have That Printed Hymnals Don’t?
A subscription includes a rich compendium of resources for each hymn, including a short audio sample of the song. Accessibility is an essential feature of the hymnal, which is why Braille-compatible versions are included. It also includes PDFs of the sheet music transcribed into every key, composer and lyricist biographies, contextual information, and much more to help music directors and worship leaders choose hymns/songs for worship or other programs. There are also indices to search for occasions or themes that coordinate with the UUA’s WorshipWeb library.
Can You Play an Entire Hymn via the Virtual Hymnal?
No. Just as you need musicians to play hymns from the printed hymnals, and the congregation to sing them, it’s the same here. However, Sing Out Love does include short samples of the hymns for you to get a feel for all of the new music we’ve added.
Is This a Replacement for the UUA’s Printed Hymnals?
No. It includes many—but not all—of the songs from the UUA’s printed hymnal, Singing the Living Tradition, and the teal supplement, Singing the Journey. We’re also working to include hymns from the other Singing the Living Tradition supplement, Las voces del camino. We’re trying to get as many of these hymns into Sing Out Love as we can, but the copyrights to a surprising number of them are owned by major licensing corporations, so obtaining permissions for them is labor intensive and sometimes cost-prohibitive. That’s just one guarantee that these physical books will never go away.
How Many Hymns/Songs Does Sing Out Love Have?
You’ll get new music every month! In addition to many of previously published hymns from the UUA’s printed hymnals, Sing Out Love contains more than sixty new hymns/songs, and we’ll add at least five new hymns on the first Wednesday of each month. Conservatively, we hope to have 300 hymns and songs by the end of 2025, and we’ll likely well exceed that.
How Are Composers/Songwriters Paid?
Unlike the traditional royalty model where a composer is paid based on how often their song is used—which requires reporting by congregations or others who use it—Sing Out Love compensates composers at a flat rate for each component of their work included in the virtual hymnal, irrespective of how many times it’s used. This means composers are paid whether their song is downloaded once or hundreds of times. Also, they maintain full copyright over their work.
How Can I Learn More?
View our guided tour and find information about submitting music to the hymnal on our home page, UUA.org/singoutlove. You can subscribe directly within the hymnal: singoutlove.org.
Also, make sure you subscribe to the WorshipWeb newsletter. Subscribers will be the first to receive every update.