Feature-by-feature deep dive
Where each tool's job starts and stops — and where they hand off to each other.
The song catalog and licensing
CCLI SongSelect: This is the whole point of SongSelect and something Song7 doesn't attempt. A 260,000-song licensed catalog, tied to your Church Copyright License, with official lead sheets and vocal sheets. If you need to legally find, transpose, and download a chart for almost any worship song, this is the source. Nothing here is a knock on SongSelect — it's the reason you keep it.
Song7: No catalog at all. Song7 holds only the songs you add to your own Space, and it's up to you to hold the licenses for them. That's a deliberate limit: Song7 is a workflow tool, not a licensing service, so it can't and won't replace what SongSelect gives you here.
Building the actual service setlist
CCLI SongSelect: There's no drag-and-drop setlist or service-planning builder inside SongSelect. You can find and customize individual songs, but assembling and ordering a Sunday set — and sharing it with the band — happens elsewhere.
Song7: This is core. Drag songs from your library into a set, reorder them, set the key per song, publish, and the whole team sees it — plus set history so you can see what was played before. This is the most direct gap Song7 fills for a team already on SongSelect.
Live sync and congregation presentation
CCLI SongSelect: Not its job. SongSelect has no real-time team sync and no congregation projection of its own — it integrates outward into presentation tools like ProPresenter or WorshipTools Presenter, which you run separately.
Song7: Both are built in. A leader's key or song change pushes to the team's devices in real time, and a congregation-facing presentation mode puts clean, full-screen lyrics on any screen with a browser — no second app to open, no export step between planning and projecting.
Editing, OCR, and owning your charts
CCLI SongSelect: You customize catalog copies — change key, tempo, layout, and (on paid tiers) download a ChordPro file — but you're working with SongSelect's arrangements, not building a private editable library that's yours to keep. Downloads are also capped at 200 unique songs per year.
Song7: A private library you actually edit — chords-above-lyrics or ChordPro — with photo-to-chart OCR that turns a printed sheet into an editable, transposable chart. And you can export any song, or the whole library, as ChordPro, plain text, or JSON, with no annual cap and no lock-in.
Transposition
CCLI SongSelect: One-tap transposition into any key, plus tempo, note-size, and octave tweaks. Solid, and on par with Song7 for the core task.
Song7: The same one-tap transposition, with capo support, and — the difference — the new key syncs to the whole band in real time rather than being a per-download setting. On a Sunday, that live push is what matters.
Rehearsal audio
CCLI SongSelect: A win, via the separate Rehearse product — practice audio tracks tied to the catalog so your team can prepare against real recordings. Song7 has nothing equivalent.
Song7: Includes a built-in metronome and tuner, but no backing tracks, stems, or practice audio. If rehearsal playback is central to how your team prepares, that stays with SongSelect Rehearse.
Closing the loop: CCLI reporting
CCLI SongSelect: Sourcing songs through SongSelect is part of staying compliant with your CCLI license, but SongSelect itself doesn't assemble your usage report from the songs you actually played.
Song7: Because your setlists live in Song7, it can generate a CCLI usage report from what your team actually sang — turning the plan you already built into the reporting you owe CCLI. That's the loop back to the license SongSelect depends on.