The history of SacredSheetMusic.com
Read how it all began from the printing ministry of C & L Enterprises to the digital downloads of SacredSheetMusic.com!
In 1986 two musicians, Duane Ream and David Parker, had a dream of publishing quality, conservative, sacred music. Duane and David incorporated in May of 1986 under the name C & L Enterprises, Inc. of Greenville. The "C" stood for Duane's wife Candice and the "L" stood for David's wife Linda. That first year they produced two books, a medium voice vocal solo book entitled Soloist 1 Medium Voice and an advanced piano book entitled HymnNotes 1 Advanced. They enlisted the talent of the finest composers and arrangers they knew contracting names like Mac Lynch, Faye Lopez, Joan Pinkston, David Warren, Duane Ream, Becky Bonam, Gina Sprunger, Joan Love Parker, Mark Parker and many more to write the piano hymn arrangements. Duane and David collaborated on most of the vocal solo settings. In 1989 Duane felt the need to focus on other pursuits and he stepped down from C & L Enterprises. The Soloist and HymnNote series would conltinue to grow to thirty-three (33) books and multiple octavos offerings before the printing aspect of "C & L," as it was called, was discontinued in 2010. Seeing the handwriting on the wall in 2007 David launched an internet online store, SacredSheetMusic.com, and began transitioning all the C & L selections actually owned by C & L to the new site. Vendors were brought on board as the dynamics of the company changed. The original C & L business model was as an independent publisher where arrangements from the "outside" were either purchased outright by C & L or licensed on a royalty basis to print. When transitioning to the internet C & L Enterprises, Inc. of Greenville (now DBA SacredSheetMusic.com) simply became another vendor at its own website and other publishing individuals and companies came on board as independent vendors. In 2010 the final C & L publications were liquidated below cost and the printing aspect was completely shut down.
In November of 2013, the original SacredSheetMusic.com website broke during a transition to a more modern server process. The original site was built on software that quickly became dated and incompatible with new technology. After clear, providential direction, new developers contacted SacredSheetMusic.com and offered to rebuild the site from scratch. On April 1st, 2014 the new, bare-bones SacredSheetMusic.com launched. Stage 2 of development was completed on August 1st, 2014 when SacredSheetMusic.com launched the capability of bringing on new vendors - see "New Vendor Application Process." Stage 3 was completed in November of 2014 when the foreign language counterparts of the SacredSheetMusic.com site in Spanish, German and French launched. Currently there are approximately 3000 musical selections from close to 70 vendors now available at the website with over 6,000 new selections that will be added by the Spring of 2017 from the Lorenz Corporation. The process of continually improving the SacredSheetMusic.com website is constantly ongoing. We have developed a "clutter free" website that quickly directs the customer to needed resources. The SacredSheetMusic.com taxonomy (search process) is second to none in the online industry. We ARE the online, sacred sheet music equivalent of Amazon Marketplace or eBay allowing approved vendors to come on board and personally sell their own music. We have wonderful tools unique to the digital download industry to help teachers/customers such as the "SacredSheetMusic Share-A-Piece" resource. We continue to set goals and undergo projects to improve the website for both customers and vendors. A tremendous debt of gratitude goes to Mr. Matt Bennett for his incredible skill and knowledge in developing the new SacredSheetMusic.com to its current status. His patience in this collaborative process has been invaluable. SOLI DEO GLORIA
Dr. David G. Parker, President & CEO
[email protected]