guitarists in here?

[Spud1]

bookmarked the link ty

Its a real pain in the ass with the tab sites going down - this time its the MPA though not the riaa Not that it matters..

Lots are going down week by week, luckily ultimate-guitar is still there but mx, mysongbook, and many more have gone heh

To be honest i fully understand the postition of the MPA and other agencies that are gunning for these sites at the moment - many of the tabs for big bands have been ripped straight from the official tab/song book - which is blatent copywrite theft.

My objection though, is that 99% of the tabs on these sites are user created - and are usually wrong. I've lost count of the number of times I have found a tab, and pick out a section to hear nothing remotely similar to the song i'm trying to play lol..and if it's wrong is it still infirngement? It's a difficult issue though - if you tab a song by ear you could very well get it 100% right (especially with some of the crap released these days..) - but you have not copied it out of the book..

The best solution would be for them to start licencing digital copies of songs - each of them fully licenced and 100% correct (ie official tabs), and sell them online for say, 99p a tab. They could be distributed in a variety of formats (guitar pro, powertab for example) and I wouldn't even be against DRM for it provided it were sensible.

I would buy the tabs - I would happily pay a quid or so for a full tab I know is 100% accurate..and i'm sure many others would do the same. I buy sheet music from shops when I can - but it's very expensive, and unless your looking for mainstream stuff your a bit stuffed - anyone ever seen a Sonata Arctica or static-x tab book in HMV? you can normally find SOAD, offspring, sepultura - all the big names, but smaller/less popular tabs are hard to find..so unless you have some great small music stores near you ( I don't ) you look to the net.

[mmh]

This is exactly the trouble we face Spud.

there are thousands of tab books, for main bands, the smaller bands, or new releases do not get tab books as fast.

and the fact of the matter is, the OFFICIAL tab books are STILL just composures of best guesses by people that do it for a living, ive talked to countless people on an online forum which i frequent where there are people that do it for a living putting tabs in the OFFICIAL tab books, and they say themselves, its difficult to tab something out 100%

personally, ive bought tab books and found tabs that are better online than what you get out of the books. but oes that mean they are 100% right. No, it means they are more accurate, and better written, but it stuill doesnt make them a full copy.

Basically the MPA are taking the pi$$, and they are fighting a losing battle.

Online Tabs has INCREASED the number of guitarists, because the education needed to self teach someone is at the click of a button. But what the MPA forget is with this surge of new guitarists, some of these unknowing are going to want the proper book if they cant find the thing online, which is where i would imagine is the biggest market for the books MPA sell.

So if nothing else, Tab sites have INCREASED the potential market in which they are selling.

What they are doing now, is trying to get hgreedy and force everyone to buy the books.

well it aint gonna happen.

Riaa, tried to stop mp3 downloads, but it didnt work. it became more underground, but it didnt work.

same will happen with tabs.

my 2 cents..

[Spud1]

Yeah I think you're right - underground is the way it will go..

Probably similar to what happened to software piracy, will move from websites offering downloads to private message boards for the experienced tabbers, and some kind of p2p for joe public.

Hard to believe though, although legally they may be right, having to stalk private boards or go to p2p networks for tabs - just doesn't seem right.

Especially as you say, online guitar tutoring through tabs etc is how so many people are learning guitar these days - i'm a living example as i'm almost all self taught from websites (and then corrected on technique by friends, but still I learn songs from the net) and the few books i have..