Music industry targets guitar tab sites
Cory Bergman August 27th, 2006
Every so often, I’ll visit GuitarTabs.com to find out how to play a new song on my guitar. I’ll search for the song, then pick from a list of tabs — basically a simplified sheet music written by someone who has taken the time to reverse-engineer the song down to its guitar components. Sounds innocent enough, huh? Well the music industry has suddenly deemed them a copyright violation — even if they’re inaccurate — and is threatening to sue to shut the sites down. (Read the threatening letter here.) “People can get it for free on the Internet, and it’s hurting the songwriters,” said Lauren Keiser, who is president of the Music Publishers’ Association. I, like many other strictly amateur guitarists, would never buy sheet music or a guitar tab. In effect, we’re fans of the artist, and the guitar tab sites are basically fan sites. But again, the music industry’s unbelievable lack of creativity — why aren’t guitar tabs part of their existing fan sites? — why wouldn’t you want to maximize the number of people privately playing your artists’ songs? — has led to a legal crackdown.
9 Comments Add your own
1. Terry Heaton | August 27th, 2006 at 11:50 am
And here’s the reverse of that. Long live the revolution!
2. Bill | August 27th, 2006 at 12:49 pm
I never used the site you mentioned, but when the lawyer-types shut down OLGA (On-Line Guitar Archive), I knew it was the end of an era on the internet. That archive had been up and running in various forms for a decade.
Again, it’s the music industry alienating fans in a futile grab for a few pennies. Does anyone REALLY buy guitar tab books at $20 a throw? I didn’t think so.
3. Safran | August 27th, 2006 at 2:14 pm
It’s absurd. It’s also going to be an interesting freedom of speech issue. The tabs are often figured out by the people who contribute them. Nobody can own a chord progression. So if I write “The Lost Remote Blues goes C7 F7 G7,” I’m just telling someone how it works. It’s not like stealing the music file as it was performed. Further - there’s no iTunes-like-way of getting one tab at a time.
There’s something of an argument to be had for reprinting lyrics without permission. But it all seems silly and nearsighted. Bands should WANT their fans to play their songs and share their variations.
I guess the music industry was running out of ways to be dopey.
4. Brian | August 27th, 2006 at 3:28 pm
I’d agree it’s absurd. Any musician worth his salt can work out chord changes on a song. Most song chord changes are just rips from other chord changes. What about chord changes for blues songs? Most of Zepplin’s songs are straight blues or variations, shouldn’t Robert Johnson get that money, if anyone should? what about Clapton’s stuff? are they going to take that down?
This is totaly sillyness. Even restricting posting song lyrics is ridiculous. That’s what music is all about, sharing and moving music from one generation to the next.
5. Chris Weaver | August 27th, 2006 at 7:30 pm
With this mentality from the mega-corps, it’s amazing that public libraries have lasted as long as they do, with the free books and all.
6. Sir P | August 31st, 2006 at 7:13 am
Hi there,
If you go to http://www.olga.net/ the first tab site on earth… it has just closed, again … but whats really interesting is that it has uploaded the letter from the MPA lawyers for us to read.. it even lists which songs are illegal.
I own a tab site and I think its all a bit mental.. just waiting to see how things progress…
Cheers,
Sir P
GuitarTabBlog.com
7. Justin | September 13th, 2006 at 5:30 pm
Well I can’t agree more, I’ve been playing for a while now! and always turn to the tab sites whenever I’m struggling to play any particular song that I want to play. the MPA are just a greedy bunch of ignorant twats trying to squeeze money from the average joe who just wants to be able to play songs by their favourite bands. I mean, how else are the big music corps going to get their future musicians, the musicians whom learn from their piers, the piers who’s music appears on tab sites for budding musicians to learn from. it’s just purely greed driven, and they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it
8. Guitarweek Inc. | July 20th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
The main problem is that these websites are focused on just providing tabs and then making money from them through ads, The fair use act allows transcriptions to be ‘given’ away as long as it is meant to be educational and alot of the tabsites cannot say that they are doing it for educational purposes…
Another problem is that the websites themselves do not understand the issues behind the ‘fair use’ act which is the only way they can legally give away transcriptions, Alot of them might even qualify to stay open if they just take down the ads and figure out another way of making money…
Another problem is that they don’t want to challenge the issue along with noone else wanting to support the cause, These sites were not shut down by the courts but took down the tabs because they thought they were violating the law (Most are) and they also actually beleive what the MPA is telling them…
I (we) not only support free transcriptions but encourage people to keep on doing it and its sad that the MPA can warp people’s sense of what copyright infringement really is, I wish I had 100,000 transcriptions in our own songs database so the MPA would send on of those letters to us because we know the issues and we fall into the exception to say…
Guitarweek is all about learning guitar and that is our major leg to stand and we also have no financial motives which is a MAJOR leg, Alot of the things that the MPA said in their initial public notice can be challenged in court and there are some sites that they will not approach for various reasons mainly size and compliance…
w w w . g u i t a r w e e k . c o m / m p a / i n d e x . p h p
We are working on our own songs database and we want to take what the ‘free’ tabsites were doing to the next level by improving the quality of the transcriptions, I (we) started the songs database so people could learn the songs and just having the transcriptions will not garauntee that….
w w w .g u i t a r w e e k . c o m / s o n g s / i n d e x . p h p
There’s only sixteen songs in there now which were all submitted by myself and the MPA would most likely not threaten us at this point but if it were 500,000 transcriptions then they would have to decide what to do, I we ever went to court (highly unlikely) then we would challenge the issues about transcriptions are ‘the authors own interpretation’ when they are suppose to be facts…
The MPA says all kinds of stuff in their letter and we pretty much chopped it with our own little comments, To the MPA it is all about money and deep down they could really care less about ‘the music’…
9. Lucy | January 14th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Wow, thanks for the excellent information!
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