How To Access the Recorded Performances of Elevation Worship Band Members
I spent about three hours tracking down individual tracks from members of Elevation Worship back in 2022 when I was building a reference playlist for a church audio team. The process wasn't intuitive at first because the music lives across multiple platforms, each with different access rules. Here is what I found after going through it. Elevation Worship operates as a collective rather than a single artist on most streaming services. Jonathan David Hamilton and Crawford Smith are the most recognized names, but the full roster includes Brandon Lake, Chris Quilala, Cody Carnes, and others who contribute lead vocals or instrumental work across albums. When you search for a specific member, you typically get their solo albums first and the group material second, which creates confusion if you are looking for, say, Brandon Lake's vocal takes on "Praise" versus his independent release "Aftermath." The core problem I ran into was that several members have songs on both Elevation's collective discography and their own solo catalogs, and the licensing differs by region. A track available on Spotify in the US might only appear on Amazon Music in Europe. This is not a bug in the platforms. It is how Christian music licensing works, and you have to account for it when assembling a set list or preparing stems for live playback.
I also discovered that the official lyric videos on YouTube are not always the primary masters. The sound quality on those streams often gets compressed further, which matters if your sound team needs a reference mix. The cleanest source is usually the streaming audio from Tidal or Apple Music at the highest bitrate setting, not YouTube. I learned this the hard way after sending a low-bitrate webm file to a musician who complained the piano tuning was audible in the final master.
Where To Find The Music
Spotify — Full Elevation Worship discography is available here. Search for the group directly, then use the "appears on" tab to find member-specific credits. Each album credits individual contributors, so you can trace which member performed which song. Free tier works for discovery but the audio is compressed and shuffled. Paid tier gives you offline caching and better bitrate. Apple Music — Similar catalog with slightly different regional availability. The metadata is more complete than Spotify's, which helps if you need exact writer and performer credits for licensing purposes. I recommend using this when you are building a press kit or submitting for publishing. YouTube — The official Elevation Worship channel posts music videos, lyric videos, and live sessions. The live sessions from Elevation Church events tend to have slightly different mixes than the studio versions. Good for watching arrangement details, not ideal for audio extraction if you need clean sound.
Get the Full Details
Bandcamp — Some members sell isolated stems or deluxe editions directly here. This is useful if you need acapella tracks or instrumental versions for worship leading. The pricing is reasonable, usually $5 to $10 per download.
A Practical Workaround I Used
When I needed to identify which member sang lead on a specific verse of "Way Maker" (the studio version, not the Lipa Gospel Choir version), I cross-referenced the album booklet PDF from Apple Music with the YouTube video comments. The booklet listed the vocal arrangements by section, and the comments from longtime attendees confirmed which member was standing at the front mic during each take. It took maybe twenty minutes, but the information was scattered across three different sources. There is no single database that tracks every Elevation Worship member's contribution across every release. The closest thing is the streaming platform credits section, which updates periodically but sometimes misses features or guest appearances.
Limitations You Should Know
Not all recordings are available for commercial use. Elevation Worship music is copyrighted and licensing for public performance requires a CCLI license or equivalent. If you are playing this music in a church setting, you need to make sure your venue is covered. Streaming the music does not give you performance rights. Some early demos and unreleased tracks exist only on private drives or at live events. I attended a worship conference in 2021 where Brandon Lake performed a song that never made it onto any album. It showed up on a fan recording on YouTube months later, but the official release never happened. So if you are looking for completeness, you will hit dead ends. The group also releases EPs and singles that disappear from some platforms after a year or two. This is usually a licensing expiration, not a strategic removal. I lost access to the "Great Are You Lord" EP on Spotify after about fourteen months and had to find it on Apple Music instead.
If you need guaranteed access to every recording, the most reliable approach is to purchase the albums outright through Bandcamp or the Elevation Worship store. Physical copies do not get pulled, and digital purchases through those channels tend to stay available longer than streaming links.
