This is a central platform for filkers by filkers.
The goal? To make it as easy as possible for everyone in our community to share their songs with each other. (For now, we’re focusing on lyrics and chords. Sheet music is on the roadmap. Recordings won’t be part of this platform).
How does it work?:
1. Want to share songs? You’ll need to register first
Before you can share anything, we need a registration from you confirming that we’re allowed to host your songs. Why? To protect us from cease & desist letters from collecting societies or other entities. Just send us your registration by email – we’ll keep it on file for all your future submissions.
2. Once you’re registered, you’re good to go
After registering, you can send us songs by email. You can submit your own songs (meaning you’re at least a co-author and have permission from everyone else involved) as ChordPro files – we’ll take care of sorting them into the filksongbook. Please try to format them according to our guidelines. The cleaner they are, the faster they’ll go live! 🙂
IMPORTANT: We can only accept songs if we have registrations from everyone who wrote the lyrics! (People who contributed to the melody/music don’t need to explicitly consent, as long as no sheet music is submitted. But they still need to be properly credited! See ChordPro instructions)
3. A volunteer curation team keeps everything running smoothly
A handful of people review, correct if needed, and integrate the submitted files. But: this isn’t censorship! We just want to keep the songbook consistent in its formatting, so everyone can enjoy using it. So we check that the format is correct, not the content.
What the team does:
- check that files meet all formatting requirements, meaning that files:
- fix small obvious mistakes themselves
- ask submitters to correct larger issues
- verify we have registrations from all listed lyricists
- Once everything’s correct, they upload the file(s) to the songbook. After the next upload cycle, everyone can find and download them. Yay! 🙂
Want to help with curation? Take a look here! We’d love to have you on the team!
4. Everyone can download and perform all songs we host in the filk community
You don’t need to register to use the download section and download songs.
What else exactly may be done with the respective song without having to ask the creators separately is up to the submitters. You’ll find this information for each song in the {c:License...} entry below the lyrics.
An explanation of what the respective licenses mean can be found on our Licenses page.