Amateur players seeking the chords for commonly played songs are out of luck these days, since the music publishers had a fit of intellectual-property-itis and sent takedown letters to a compilation site. That’s just one of the entries in a compilation by mashable.com, “Death by Lawyer: Ten Cool Sites We Miss“, which also answers the question of why the wonderful Pandora internet radio service is available only to U.S.-based computers (via Katherine Mangu-Ward, Reason “Hit and Run”).
5 Comments
They destroyed OLGA (online guitar archive) about a decade ago. People still post tabs, but with no lyrics. I guess now they’re trying to take down the lyricless tabs, as well?
I guess I really don’t have a problem with the music industry in this case. Sheet music is a valid, viable market and the tablature is certainly a derivative work of the original music. Giving away for free (and accepting advertising) what the music industry could charge for seems legitimate.
I don’t agree that it is vaiable, the sheet music industry only puts out mediocre song lists at best. When I want a song, they don’t have it or I have to buy a whole compilation that I don’t want.
And most don’t have every good tabs for bass players. So when they come up with a better way to provide what I want, I’ll buy their stuff, but until then they won’t get a nickel of my money.
Is it a copyright infringement? The way I see it is that a tablature posted by an individual and marked as “their interpretation of the song” should not be a legal issue. How far does the law percieve the copyright laws? What if the song was posted and misspelled or named inappropriately in order to avoid the impression of the legitimate sheet music? Or am I just rambling?
There is no doubt that a transcription of a song without permission violates copyright. The fact that it’s in “tablature” versus music notation is irrelevant.
I also feel that calling the tab your own interpretation is disingenuous as the whole point of these tab sites is to get accurate transcriptions of the material so you can replay that songs accurately. But if you really are doing an interpretation of the song, it would still be a derivative work.
I agree with Mmm. There is a market for this and the song writers and publishers deserve to have their rights protected. But I also agree with JScott that the current market is not filling that market. (I’m a musician too so I know what JScott is complaining about!)
The music industry should come to its senses and license the use of its music to tab sites. That way the industry gets paid and users get more accurate transcriptions of their favorite songs.