As most of you know, many of the big tablature sites have recently either stopped showing tabs or shut down because of the legal threats from the Music Publishers Association ("MPA"). The MPA claims by-ear transcriptions of tabs infringe copyright and deprive musicians of income. Today, I too received the takedown letter from MPA.
TTW among tabs shows tons of free promotion to bands and artists, including album reviews, news and the such. We are also responsible for over $3,000 sales in albums, sheet music, ringtones and MP3s monthly. How does TTW deprive musicians ? That's a big mystery to me.
This is NOT, and I mean NOT, the death of TTW. We too are seeking licenses to tablature. The MPA on their news claims that "Our members are ready and willing to work with any web site owner who wants to build a legitimate on-line business to make music available to amateurs and professionals while providing compensation to the people who create and own that music. We look forward to developing new ways of distributing our products through the Internet for the benefit of everyone in the music community.". This is a big LIE. I have been in contact with other tablature sites' owners, and NONE of them have received a reply from the MPA. They don't answer calls or emails. I have also personally contacted record labels, they don't bother to answer my emails either.
We will continue to display tabs and lyrics as long as possible. This will not affect other areas of the site, we will be posting news and reviews as usual.
You can contact the MPA via mpa.org. Please keep all feedback civil and constructive.
there isn't much "legal" sheet music for drums of the modern bands.... man I can get so angry about these *****
what's wrong with tabbing? they can only say it's illegal when the tabs are 100% the same as the "legal" music sheets....they aren't ...
the gouverment try to encourage cultural things like theatres, museum etc... tabs are really important for musicans . They can play music along with their favourite band and really improve in their skills... music is also a big cultural thing so why doesn't the gouvernemt support tabs ... or "legal" sheet music so they make more (drum) music sheets and lower the price....
I prefer tabs because I think it's easyer to read a tab and I dont have to buy a whole book if I only want 1 song...and I can only find drum "legal" music of old band or drum tips
I'm done talking ... I hope this dont gona be the end for TTW (goodluck )
(the name of the bad guys : Marc Ostrow, Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., Chair )
This issue is something that I've railed against for a while... for a while I was relatively outspoken about it. The strong-arm approach that the MPA is taking, and has taken, has strangely coincided with a lot of the increase in CEOs and senior executives in a lot of coperations getting more and more money, while they seem to do even less.
I can just picture this scene: it's a lavishly decorated, softly lit meeting room. A lot of bored executives are twirling in their fine office chairs, and they're all sitting around, bored. There task was to increase profits. One guy, out of idle boredom says "what about tablature sites?" Some mumbling goes around the room, and someone says "what the crap's a 'tablature site'?" Upon getting a brief explanation, the members of this record company make some calls, and suddenly, their business instinct kicks in. Suddenly, they're screaming for blood, and have the authority to get their blood, under penalty of shutting everything down.
Maybe this is right? I mean, if there's a pre-exsisting profit coming from sites like TTW, why would they be wanting to lower the popularity of tab sites, and cause a detriment to profits?
_____________ It's not that life's too short it's that your frost spire is.
The MPA claims by-ear transcriptions of tabs infringe copyright and deprive musicians of income......That is so beyond stupid that I can't even express it. So if you sing a song during karaoke night, do you deprive musicians of their income? Doesn't part of this infringe on our freedom of speech because freedom of speech also includes written things? Is there anyway we can retreive our old tabs? I don't feel like reworking everything, esp the old songs, which I havent played in forever....Thanks and this umm blows
Well karaoke wouldn't be copyright infringement, as you have to pay for the discs which in turn generate income to the artist. However if you write down chords to a song for a friend on a piece of paper, that would be copyright infringement.
You can access your tabs via the My tabs -page in My Space.
I see what was going on. I have to access the tab through the edit tab, clicking on the actual song link brings you to the page where the song should be but it doesnt pop up. A bug maybe?
Im not gonna argue legal stuff with you, but I still think it's crazy that writting down a song that you tabbed by ear to a friend that, that is copy-write infringement. It's a strange world we live in. Another question, is TTW based out of the United States?
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