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Guitar Tabs

Author: Britt Turner

What happens when someone features guitar tabs on a Web site so musicians can learn to play their favorite songs? The posting is probably copyright infringement since publishers have licensed very few guitar tab sites. But publishers are facing even more pressing questions than whether they should sue the unauthorized sites: What is the best business model to compete with the free, unauthorized sites, and do current publishing contracts even cover the necessary rights to post tabs to the authorized sites?

The sale of print versions of guitar tabs is a multimillion-dollar business. Although publishers’ revenue is confidential, a source with a print publisher crunched some numbers for me based on information from a NAMM report, the company’s own revenue and the source’s estimate of competitors’ revenue.

According to a NAMM report, the North American print music market generated $539 million in retail sales in 2006. My source estimates that about 48% of that amount ($258.7 million) was related to songs in about 2.7 million songbooks. About 16% of the song portion of the revenue was likely attributable to guitar tabs, thereby generating roughly $41.4 million in retail revenue from about 40 million individual guitar tabs. With wholesale prices typically 45%-50% of the retail price, print publishers likely received $18.6 million-$20.7 million in 2006 from print guitar tabs, which they then shared with songwriters and their publishers.

Currently, only three commercial guitar tab sites appear to be authorized by a large number of publishers. Each sells tabs as digital sheet music: FreeHand Music (FreeHand Systems), Musicnotes and SheetMusicDirect (Hal Leonard and Music Sales U.K.). Meanwhile, sites that may contain unlicensed tabs keep growing. From July 2006 to July 2007, unique monthly visitors grew for ultimate-guitar.com from 1.4 million to 2.4 million, and for 911tabs.com from 473,000 to 1.1 million, according to comScore Media Metrix.

In an attempt to compete with the free sites, Musicnotes acquired a previously unlicensed site, MXTabs.net, with plans to license the site’s database of tabs and add others, offer them for free and share ad revenue with publishers. Among the publishers that licensed rights for the site were BMG Music Publishing, Famous Music, Bug Music and peermusic.

But when Musicnotes made a deal with the Harry Fox Agency in May so that publishers could opt in to the licensing deal for MXTabs, Hal Leonard reacted negatively. It e-mailed some publishers to urge them to think carefully before licensing the “free” business model, which may include amateur (i.e., not necessarily accurate) guitar transcriptions of songs. Musicnotes posted the letter and its reply on the MXTabs site, which has not yet launched its service.

It’s unclear whether the reaction to the dispute is holding up the site. But the debate is unlikely to be resolved soon. It boils down to two questions: In light of all the illegal sites, should tabs be offered for free on ad-supported sites even though “free” may feed into a consumer demand for more free music, thus devaluing music? Or should legal action shutting down unauthorized sites and educational efforts be the strategy for publishers while building per-download or per-use sites for tabs?

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/art-and-entertainment-articles/guitar-tabs-746119.html

About the Author
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Learning Guitar Basics

Author: John Roberts

When you start with something new, you are usually so eager to jump into this new venture with both feet that you forget that every subject has its own basic information and way of doing things. When you start learning guitar playing, you want to be the new sensation on the hit charts within one day. Woa – pull in the reigns. Learn the guitar basics first. Why? You will be a better guitar player later on. Even the masters of the guitar started off with the basics and progressed from there. There are many things that are included when you learn guitar basics: the chords, the scales, the fingering, but perhaps most importantly, you need to learn all of the different parts of the guitar.

How is a guitar constructed?

One of the basic reasons to learn guitar basics, is to know the different parts of a guitar. As you progress, you will meet different terms for the parts of a guitar and if you do not know those terms, you can find yourself struggling to learn the guitar. First of all, you should know what the body of the guitar is:

1. The guitar’s body is the large wooden part of the guitar.

2. The thin part of the guitar that is connected to the body of the guitar is called the neck.

3. The bridge is located on the body of the guitar near the hole.

4. The strings of the guitar begin at the bridge and end at the pegs, which is located on the head of the guitar.

5. The head of the guitar is on the end of the neck not connected to the body.

6. There are small metal pieces located at various intervals along the neck of the guitar. These metal pieces are called the frets. When the player presses the strings into the frets at various intervals, the strings vibrate and produce different pitches.

The way you hold the guitar differs for nearly every type of song you play on a guitar. If you are right handed, your right hand is your strumming hand. Thus, you hold your guitar so that your right hand rests on the strings of the guitar above the hole. This means that your left hand is your picking hand, and your left hand should rest on the neck of the guitar. If you are left handed, then you should use these directions as well, only reversed.

Take time to learn the guitar basics and you will be richly rewarded not only with money, but also with a life long relationship with a wonderful instrument.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/art-and-entertainment-articles/learning-guitar-basics-113132.html

About the Author
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