While this isn't breaking news (it's a little old) OLGA (the OnLine Guitar Archive) is under attack again from the National Music Publishers' Association and the Music Publishers' Association. They've sent a cease and desist to OLGA and OLGA has taken down all their guitar tablature. (It's still not up after almost 2 months.)
While copyright is important, at some point it becomes ridiculous. It's not like the guitar tablature that you find at guitar tab sites is complete. Heck. Quite often it's just wrong.
Yes. I get the point that musician's often sell music books and that's a part of their income. But a lot don't publish music books for their music. So how is anyone going to learn to play it?
Well, obviously I think Guitar & Drum Trainer is a great way to learn new music (which is why I created it), but it doesn't transcribe the music for you. I quite often use GDT along with guitar tablature to practice. I just slow the music down then play along with the tab in front of me. I've got music books that I bought and sometimes I use tablature from guitar tab sites.
Musician's have always learned music that other people wrote, and they always will learn music that other's wrote. This isn't anything new or revolutionary. You can often go to a bar where a tribute band is playing music from some popular band. Again, that isn't something new.
The NMPA and MPA purport to represent musician's, and while that may be true for a lot, there are also a lot of musician's that don't agree with their overly heavy-handed tactics. Many musician's don't mind having lyrics published at lyrics sites, or guitar tabs published at guitar tab sites. Heck. Some like it.
Before I posted some Judas Priest tablature, I fired off an email asking for permission first. I was pleased to receive a positive response with the only condition that I acknowledge Judas Priest and put a link to their site. I'm more than happy to do so and very grateful for permission.
I bring up Judas Priest as an example not just because I've posted Judas Priest tablature here at Renegade Minds, but because they're a good example of how the NMPA and MPA don't represent all musicians. The tablature for The Ripper and other songs is directly from music books that you'd buy in a store. I actually own the same music books that all the tabs are from. So is Judas Priest losing money from that? Well, perhaps. But they obviously don't care about that. They seem to care more and be more interested in their fans. (Yep - I'm a huge Priest fan!)
I've even put complete MP3 albums up on the web with the blessing of the artists. They were happy for me to help spread their music, and I was more than happy to do so.
The fact is that the music industry isn't keeping up with technology or the way the world works. It's run by a bunch of people that quite frankly should be fired for mismanaging things and general incompetence. They're hiding behind copyright and laws that are from an age long past, while pretending to actually represent musicians that they don't represent.
All the technology needed to manage things properly and ensure that artists get paid for their work exists. It's just not that difficult to do. It's way past time that the music industry gets its act together and keeps up with the real world that the rest of us live in.
Then again, being a software guy, I actually understand technology and how it can help. Piracy in the software world has been a problem for a long time, but it's something that we live with and deal with. We usually don't need to resort to lawyers as there are better solutions to the problem. I just wonder when the music industry is going to wake up and figure out that they have options available to them that will make their lives easier, satisfy music fans, and pay the musician's better than they're getting paid now.
Creating new business models isn't always easy, but I can come up with tons of ways to monetize music that aren't being done. Perhaps the most frustrating thing is that the NMPA and MPA have refused to work with OLGA or other guitar tab sites to come up with a solution to the problem. They simply resort to lawyers instead of actually addressing the issue. This stinks of laziness and incompetence.
Cheers,
Ryan