Should Tab Sites Be Legal?

[Armistice]

How is having a million junior guitarists around the world wanting to learn to play YOUR song a bad thing? There HAS to be, perhaps unquantifiable, flow-on revenue for the artist.

And a lot of this discussion is centred around the fact that lots of tablature is wrong and that some of you can work it out by ear. Great. And not particularly hard when you're dealing with standard tuned guitar played in the open position and a standard pop song using standard chords.

Start delving into the world of alternate tunings, full and partial capoing, obscure and complex pieces that will possibly never actually be available to your budding guitarist where he/she lives via standard publication because it's just not available (you US dwellers would be shocked if you visited other countries and saw what you can't find that you probably take for granted), and there's a real argument that tablature does some good.

I've only ever put one piece of tablature on the net - Jethro Tull's Salamander - very obscure - I wanted to know how to play it. No-one knew, it seemed. Music not available. The couple of attempts that were up there were completely wrong and partially done - no-one could even work out what tuning was being used. So I decided to work it out, succeeded and posted it to a Jethro Tull fan site.

As a result there are now YouTube videos of various people filming themselves playing the tab I worked out and various other people watching it and being inspired to hunt down that tab and learn to play it themselves and possibly other people being inspired to remember Jethro Tull and buy their CDs and go to their gigs etc. (yep, they're still with us...). How is this bad for Jethro Tull?

I reckon Ian Anderson owes me a beer or two for working his song out for him and publishing it, seeing he never did.

If there was a reliable, pay-for-tab, iTunes type site where you could buy proper tab in PDF form, where for $1 you could get what you wanted, and where it was correct, and authorised, and if it didn't exist, you could submit your versions of things and have them verified, and could then split the proceeds with the recording artist... that would be heaven.

I'd pay a $1 for tab any day because it would save me the time to work it out myself - while I could do it, I'm sure, I just couldn't be arsed most of the time because I have other things to do.

This service exists for scored music, why not tab, seeing that's how most guitarists learn?

Now, someone get out there and invent it for me!

 

[krizzlemcstizzl]

tabs

First of all, I dont see how tabs violate copyright laws... its not like you're passing off the song as your own original work... most tabs sites dont charge for you to use them. that is not a violation of copyrights. Tabs are how most kids learn guitar... save the music! GB

 

[famous beagle]

How is having a million junior guitarists around the world wanting to learn to play YOUR song a bad thing? There HAS to be, perhaps unquantifiable, flow-on revenue for the artist.

And a lot of this discussion is centred around the fact that lots of tablature is wrong and that some of you can work it out by ear. Great. And not particularly hard when you're dealing with standard tuned guitar played in the open position and a standard pop song using standard chords.

Start delving into the world of alternate tunings, full and partial capoing, obscure and complex pieces that will possibly never actually be available to your budding guitarist where he/she lives via standard publication because it's just not available (you US dwellers would be shocked if you visited other countries and saw what you can't find that you probably take for granted), and there's a real argument that tablature does some good.

I've only ever put one piece of tablature on the net - Jethro Tull's Salamander - very obscure - I wanted to know how to play it. No-one knew, it seemed. Music not available. The couple of attempts that were up there were completely wrong and partially done - no-one could even work out what tuning was being used. So I decided to work it out, succeeded and posted it to a Jethro Tull fan site.

As a result there are now YouTube videos of various people filming themselves playing the tab I worked out and various other people watching it and being inspired to hunt down that tab and learn to play it themselves and possibly other people being inspired to remember Jethro Tull and buy their CDs and go to their gigs etc. (yep, they're still with us...). How is this bad for Jethro Tull?

I reckon Ian Anderson owes me a beer or two for working his song out for him and publishing it, seeing he never did.

If there was a reliable, pay-for-tab, iTunes type site where you could buy proper tab in PDF form, where for $1 you could get what you wanted, and where it was correct, and authorised, and if it didn't exist, you could submit your versions of things and have them verified, and could then split the proceeds with the recording artist... that would be heaven.

I'd pay a $1 for tab any day because it would save me the time to work it out myself - while I could do it, I'm sure, I just couldn't be arsed most of the time because I have other things to do.

This service exists for scored music, why not tab, seeing that's how most guitarists learn?

Now, someone get out there and invent it for me!

It's already here:

www.guitarinstructor.com

 

[famous beagle]

First of all, I dont see how tabs violate copyright laws... its not like you're passing off the song as your own original work... most tabs sites dont charge for you to use them. that is not a violation of copyrights. Tabs are how most kids learn guitar... save the music! GB

You're simply not familiar with the copyright law if you don't think it's a violation.

 

[Lt. Bob]

they have interpreted copy right law differently than it was originally intended.
It used to be that you could only seek action against an infringment if a reasonable person could confuse the original work and your work which could obviously never happen with a TAB vs recording.
But just like they suddenly extended copy right lengths to prevent songs from falling into the public domain (courts helping out their fat cat buddies who often had nothing to do with the songs or songwriters ..... they were investors who bought this stuff up) they've also passed along a very loose definition of what's copyright infringement.
BTW ..... for the most part ...... all you guys need to do to avoid an issue when you post a cover is not mention the title of the song or that it's a cover. No way they're going around the 'net listening to the umpty zillion files out there ..... they've got to have a bot that looks for keywords. Don't mention a song is a cover or the title and there's just no chance they'll catch it.

 

[zazz]

the trouble with tabs is that its in that grey forefront of this copyright backlash thats happening at the moment.

personally i cannot see big bucks being played out here apart from the big sites ....

probably the music moguls think they can set up the itune tab revenue stream and thats why they will go after the ones that are illegally in place at the moment.

so no individual is likely to get a problem ....i thought the suggestion of not mentioning the song title was a good one but surely we all want to know what it is we are being offered??

 

[Nicole_Rose]

i have mixed feelings about the whole thing. on the one hand, the writer is supposed to get paid for every written record of his or her song. that's part of the way the writer makes money. so technically a tab sheet of a writers song should bring in a small fee. on the other hand, in order to learn, as an educational thing, i believe that people should be allowed to study the song freely. and if someone learns the song off of free tabs, and then goes and plays it in a bar, the writer gets paid for that performance, so in a way it comes back around. but if that artist isn't getting something back (eventually) from the tabs then it's really stealing. how else is the writer supposed to get paid?

 

[zazz]

i have mixed feelings about the whole thing. on the one hand, the writer is supposed to get paid for every written record of his or her song. that's part of the way the writer makes money. so technically a tab sheet of a writers song should bring in a small fee. on the other hand, in order to learn, as an educational thing, i believe that people should be allowed to study the song freely. and if someone learns the song off of free tabs, and then goes and plays it in a bar, the writer gets paid for that performance, so in a way it comes back around. but if that artist isn't getting something back (eventually) from the tabs then it's really stealing. how else is the writer supposed to get paid?

i think that the writer if he is going to rely on tabs for a living then he is in deep shit....because about 99 perecent of it is people who are playing their tracks for next to no profit..be it in their bedrooms or bars where they earn next to nothing ...so there is no money to be had...all they will be doing is discougaging people to learn their song which in a roundabout way might hurt their market share..

i have acctually earned quite a lot of cash off copy wright ...not music i might add ..but what i did was just scour the media and whenever i saw a big player with cash to burn using my work without permission i just gave em a call mid campain.

its like insurance companies ...they will agree to anything until you acctually put in a claim...then they go to work.

this is the way of the world....unless there is real money to be argued over its all just pointless as with with these tabs .....i cant see there being any money.....no missed revenue....therefore no crime....the money is just not there....just principles...a waste of time.

 

[Nicole_Rose]

i think that the writer if he is going to rely on tabs for a living then he is in deep shit....because about 99 perecent of it is people who are playing their tracks for next to no profit..be it in their bedrooms or bars where they earn next to nothing ...so there is no money to be had...all they will be doing is discougaging people to learn their song which in a roundabout way might hurt their market share..

i have acctually earned quite a lot of cash off copy wright ...not music i might add ..but what i did was just scour the media and whenever i saw a big player with cash to burn using my work without permission i just gave em a call mid campain.

its like insurance companies ...they will agree to anything until you acctually put in a claim...then they go to work.

this is the way of the world....unless there is real money to be argued over its all just pointless as with with these tabs .....i cant see there being any money.....no missed revenue....therefore no crime....the money is just not there....just principles...a waste of time.

first of all principles are worth far more than money. second, it doesn't matter if there's a lot of money to be made in it or not. what's right is right. third, there are a lot of writers out there that have made tons of money off tabs/music sheets. i once bought a metallica songbook. it had the tabs of a whole album. the writers of the songs were probably getting about 10 cents for every song on every book sold. with a band like metallica that means a LOT of songs. which means a LOT of dimes.

 

[Lt. Bob]

there MAY be a dozen or two bands that make anything at all from tabs and that's about it.
Ya'll don't really know how the biz works do you?
I had some good friends who had a decade run of doing well with a couple of number ones and , I think, about 1/2 dozen records. They toured all the time and were certainly successful even if not quite gigantic success.
After it was all over, they were in massive debt.
The record companies only loan you the money to do a record .... you have to pay that stuff back. The only place most artists make money is on the live gigs they do after the album comes out and even a lot of that goes to the record companies.
As for some little guy that figures out a tab to a song and sticks it on the 'net, he's not costing any artist so much as a cent.
This bit about the poor struggling artists is just a red herring the record companies throw up to obscure the fact that the reason the artists don't make money is because the record companies structure things so they make all the money and the artist makes zilch.
There should not even be a discussion over whether someone can put up his own interpretation of how a song goes ...... just like I can put up a shitty stick drawing of the Mona Lisa ....;. no one's gonna confuse the two ..... no way my crappy drawing affects the value of the real painting.
This is just more corpaorate power grabbing and the mantra of, "oh, the poor artists" is just a non-truth in this case which the record companies have implanted in your heads as if it's the truth and it's simply not.

As for playing covers in bars ..... they get paid for that by the bars ..... ASCAP and BMI do a pretty good job of pursuing venues and making them pay the liscensing fees.

 

[MatchBookNotes]

We gotta take the music back. Should start an artists union. SAG has power and so does the writers union. Why don't musicians have a union like this?
Stand up and take notice, damn it!

 

[famous beagle]

there MAY be a dozen or two bands that make anything at all from tabs and that's about it.
Ya'll don't really know how the biz works do you?
I had some good friends who had a decade run of doing well with a couple of number ones and , I think, about 1/2 dozen records. They toured all the time and were certainly successful even if not quite gigantic success.
After it was all over, they were in massive debt.
The record companies only loan you the money to do a record .... you have to pay that stuff back. The only place most artists make money is on the live gigs they do after the album comes out and even a lot of that goes to the record companies.
As for some little guy that figures out a tab to a song and sticks it on the 'net, he's not costing any artist so much as a cent.
This bit about the poor struggling artists is just a red herring the record companies throw up to obscure the fact that the reason the artists don't make money is because the record companies structure things so they make all the money and the artist makes zilch.
There should not even be a discussion over whether someone can put up his own interpretation of how a song goes ...... just like I can put up a shitty stick drawing of the Mona Lisa ....;. no one's gonna confuse the two ..... no way my crappy drawing affects the value of the real painting.
This is just more corpaorate power grabbing and the mantra of, "oh, the poor artists" is just a non-truth in this case which the record companies have implanted in your heads as if it's the truth and it's simply not.

As for playing covers in bars ..... they get paid for that by the bars ..... ASCAP and BMI do a pretty good job of pursuing venues and making them pay the liscensing fees.

I've gotta say .. YOU don't know how the "biz" works, do you?

I know from first-hand experience, because I work for a music publishing company. Our "biz" is, literally, publishing and selling sheet music and instructional books.

And I'll tell you from direct, first-hand knowledge, there is plenty of money to be made for the artist. Whether it's profit for them or still recouping advances from the record company, it doesn't matter. It's still profit for them.

Here's a quick example. Let's say we put out a book of Tom Petty transcriptions. Artist (or, more specifically, the songwriter(s)) typically make about 12% of artist folio books that we sell. If the book sells for, say, $20, that's $2.40 in Petty's pocket (for the most part --- he has co-writers occasionally) for every book sold.

How many books like that do we sell a year? Well let me look it up really quickly .....

Ok .. looks as though we're selling about 3,000 copies a year of Tom Petty's Greatest Hits tab book. So that's about $7,200 a year from that tab book. That's nothing, right?

However, that's one Tom Petty book. You know how many Petty books we have in our catalog that sell about that many numbers? A quick search I just did revealed about 15. So that's more like $108,000 ..... a year, for doing nothing at all except having written some of the most enduring hits in rock history.

And this is just tab books! We also have PVGs (piano/vocal/guitar arrangements), Guitar Chord Songbooks, and others in the Petty catalog that do well for him.

And if you're thinking ... yeah, well, he's an established artist, he's been around forever, I have 2 words for you: Hannah (frickin') Montana. Now granted, she's not making money off guitar tabs, but she's rolling it in by the boatloads in music books in general. It seems that we release one or two new HM books a week, each one selling off the shelves.

Or what abound a band like Maroon 5? They're a big new band on the scene, like many other big new bands. Their matching tab folio to the Songs About Jane album sold over 18,000 copies in two years. That's about $43,000 to the songwriter(s) already. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't sneeze at that.

As I said before, whether or not this money is going into their pockets or back to the record companies to recoup doesn't matter. It's still their money, and it's nothing to sneeze at.

Besides, just because your friend obviously didn't sign a good deal with the company and/or wasn't smart with their advances doesn't mean everyone's like that. You owe the record company what you owe by contractual obligation. If it states in your contract that you owe them for all the promotion, air travel, limo rides, expensive dinners, and other luxaries, then all of that expense comes out of your earnings. But there are bands that are smarter than that and aren't so wasteful with their money.

The record companies lose a lot on artists too that don't go anywhere. If you're $200,000 in the hole after 3 albums and the record company drops you, they eat that cost. The band doesn't pay it back.

Anyway, that's not my point. The point is that to say bands don't make money on music books is ignorant and uninformed.

 

[Roguetitan]

I've gotta say .. YOU don't know how the "biz" works, do you?

I know from first-hand experience, because I work for a music publishing company. Our "biz" is, literally, publishing and selling sheet music and instructional books.

And I'll tell you from direct, first-hand knowledge, there is plenty of money to be made for the artist. Whether it's profit for them or still recouping advances from the record company, it doesn't matter. It's still profit for them.

Here's a quick example. Let's say we put out a book of Tom Petty transcriptions. Artist (or, more specifically, the songwriter(s)) typically make about 12% of artist folio books that we sell. If the book sells for, say, $20, that's $2.40 in Petty's pocket (for the most part --- he has co-writers occasionally) for every book sold.

How many books like that do we sell a year? Well let me look it up really quickly .....

Ok .. looks as though we're selling about 3,000 copies a year of Tom Petty's Greatest Hits tab book. So that's about $7,200 a year from that tab book. That's nothing, right?

However, that's one Tom Petty book. You know how many Petty books we have in our catalog that sell about that many numbers? A quick search I just did revealed about 15. So that's more like $108,000 ..... a year, for doing nothing at all except having written some of the most enduring hits in rock history.

And this is just tab books! We also have PVGs (piano/vocal/guitar arrangements), Guitar Chord Songbooks, and others in the Petty catalog that do well for him.

And if you're thinking ... yeah, well, he's an established artist, he's been around forever, I have 2 words for you: Hannah (frickin') Montana. Now granted, she's not making money off guitar tabs, but she's rolling it in by the boatloads in music books in general. It seems that we release one or two new HM books a week, each one selling off the shelves.

Or what abound a band like Maroon 5? They're a big new band on the scene, like many other big new bands. Their matching tab folio to the Songs About Jane album sold over 18,000 copies in two years. That's about $43,000 to the songwriter(s) already. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't sneeze at that.

As I said before, whether or not this money is going into their pockets or back to the record companies to recoup doesn't matter. It's still their money, and it's nothing to sneeze at.

Besides, just because your friend obviously didn't sign a good deal with the company and/or wasn't smart with their advances doesn't mean everyone's like that. You owe the record company what you owe by contractual obligation. If it states in your contract that you owe them for all the promotion, air travel, limo rides, expensive dinners, and other luxaries, then all of that expense comes out of your earnings. But there are bands that are smarter than that and aren't so wasteful with their money.

The record companies lose a lot on artists too that don't go anywhere. If you're $200,000 in the hole after 3 albums and the record company drops you, they eat that cost. The band doesn't pay it back.

Anyway, that's not my point. The point is that to say bands don't make money on music books is ignorant and uninformed.

i think in most any business this is called trickel down income.

 

[famous beagle]

i think in most any business this is called trickel down income.

Meaning what? That it's insignificant?

I'm not familiar with the "trickle-down" term.

 

[Roguetitan]

Meaning what? That it's insignificant?

I'm not familiar with the "trickle-down" term.

meaning every time a cash register any where in the world rings up a sale the artist makes a small percentage of that sale.

 

[famous beagle]

meaning every time a cash register any where in the world rings up a sale the artist makes a small percentage of that sale.

Oh, yes I see.

 

[ggunn]

Meaning what? That it's insignificant?

I'm not familiar with the "trickle-down" term.

Trickle down economics says that the way to make poor people better off is to make the rich richer.

 

[MikeTheSurfer]

I think the real reason record companies might want the artists to starve is to get good work out of them.

Obviously I'm kidding a bit, but it's sort of true in a way. Once they get big they usually aren't that good anymore.

Just my 2 cents (worth about 1.8 cents in Canada).

 

[MatchBookNotes]

Hey that might be selling us short in cents today! Anyone keeping an eye on the economy?

 

[Roguetitan]

Trickle down economics says that the way to make poor people better off is to make the rich richer.

Trickle down economics and trickle down income is two totally seperate things.
trickle down income really works, trickle down economics is total bull shit.

trickle down economics is where the rich get richer and the poor still pays all the taxes that the rich has found loopholes to avoid paying taxes thus causing the poor to be poorer.