Archive for the ‘Sheet Music & Tab’ Category
The Constable on September 18th, 2008
Recently MXTabs received a fax from Hal Leonard Corporation requesting the removal of songs written by the band Boston, claiming to have an exclusive print agreement with the band, including digital rights. The tabs were displayed on MXTabs through a direct license with the Harry Fox Agency, but due to Hal Leonard’s claim have since been removed.
Our thoughts: It never ceases to amaze me when two companies who are both trying to compete in a legal landscape get on each others’ case.  Here we have the biggest print publisher in the world trying to get tabs removed from the one tab site that’s trying to be legal, when there are literally thousands of other tab sites doing whatever they like - the least of which is Ultimate-Guitar which completely dwarfs the amount of people going to MXTabs or even Hal Leonard’s own web sites.
read more | digg story
The Constable on September 9th, 2008
Interesting story on Madison, WI’s newspaper, The Capital Times, website today regarding market share of legal sheet music download service, Musicnotes.com. The main gist of the article is that they are at 80% market share, but what is potentially more interesting is the quote from their CEO discussing the concerns that some of the illegal sheet music sites and networks may start to pose as they continue to proliferate.
While we are proud of the loyal customer base we have built over the years, one of our biggest concerns moving forward is the proliferation of illegal sheet music Web sites and file sharing networks,” Musicnotes CEO Kathleen Marsh said in a statement. “There are several sites that give away complete arrangements of copyrighted music for free as downloadable PDFs or other image scans. Musicnotes continues to work with industry organizations, publishers and songwriters to address this growing problem.”
Also worth mentioning is that Musicnotes is also the same company that brought back popular guitar tab web site MXTabs.net as a free, legal service.
Digg Description:
Madison-based Musicnotes said Tuesday that it currently holds nearly 80 percent of the U.S. market for downloadable sheet music and is about 10 times the size of its nearest competitor, according to HitWise.
read more | digg story
The Constable on August 26th, 2008
When it comes to intellectual property theft (or sharing, or whatever you want to call it) online, one area that is quite often overlooked is the small niche of sheet music. When it comes to music, the majority of the attention is and has been focused on audio downloads (as a quick glance at the most popular tags on this site will also attest to).
Yes, there was the crackdown a few years ago on guitar tab sites, but a quick google search will show you how effective that was. But beyond guitar tab and even audio downloads lies the foundation on which most of the music “business” is based - namely, sheet music.
Of course, there are legal outlets for downloading sheet music online, such as Musicnotes.com and Sheet Music Direct, but one issue that has plagued the sheet music industry for decades has been the photocopier. This has since been moving to the Internet through PDF downloads, etc. - and as people have become more accustomed to downloading online (both sheet music and audio), the Internet has become the new photocopier.
The current leader in online sheet music file sharing and trading is by far the web site Pianofiles.com. Boasting a catalog of over 1.5 million sheets, and well over a half of a million users, the site is quickly becoming one of the most popular destinations for online sheet music.
The site appears to be trying to skirt copyright law by not offering any actual downloads on the site itself, but instead works as a trading community, where users can trade their sheet music with each other. As for the files that are traded, it is unclear as to if they are ever hosted on the Pianofiles site. Of course, their terms require that people don’t share copyright-protected material and they have the standard “file a legal claim and we’ll take it down” system that has become the de-facto standard online.
The thing I find strange, however, is that if they really aren’t encouraging people to share copyright-protected files, why do they tell their users to buy sheet music online from Musicnotes.com or Sheet Music Plus, scan it, and upload it?
This one will be interesting to watch, since even though sheet music is a niche, it is a firmly established niche with some very well established companies (and associations) backing it. As to if Pianofiles is doing anything “illegal” by acting as an enabler, that is something I cannot answer.
The Constable on August 20th, 2008
If you’ve been following this kind of thing, then it’s no news to you that over the past few years guitar tab websites have been facing a major crackdown by the music publishing industry. Quite a few of these sites shut down, and a few just kind of went silent. Others, like Russia-based Ultimate-Guitar.com ignored the threats and continued with business as usual.
In the meantime, the music industry has made their own attempts to cater this audience, including a drop in prices for downloadable guitar tab at guitarinstructor.com (run by music publishing heavyweights, Hal Leonard Corporation), a new tab community with legal tabs run by Guitar World Magazine, and a relaunch of MXTabs.net by online sheet music and tab retailer, Musicnotes.com.
The thing is, this is the Internet - and progress will continue regardless of lawsuits or morality arguments. This is where Songsterr comes in. Like Ultimate-Guitar.com, Songsterr is also based in Russia (copyright laws be damned), and therefore has pretty much anything a budding guitarist would want to learn.
Unlike traditional free tab sites, which generally have ASCII tab or sometimes Guitar Pro files, Songsterr is a pretty fully-featured flash-based learning application that not only displays tabs for songs, but also plays the tab back with high-quality audio and a location indicator so the guitarist knows where the song currently is in the notation.
With songs ranging from artists such as AC/DC, The Beatles, David Gray and many others, it’s obvious this site is operating out of the “legal” realm here in the United States. But, since it’s in Russia, this is one that will likely not be going away.
What remains to be seen is if they will be opening up the source in any way so that users can submit their own creations, or if it will be limited to song lessons that have been created by the site’s staff. If it’s the latter, it’s going to take quite some time for them to reach a real critical mass that turns them into a go-to destination.
And as for the business plan… hell if I know. Maybe they just love to teach.
ADDENDUM: Wanted to thank techcrunch for pointing this site out to me in the first place.
The Constable on August 20th, 2008
There’s no real reason this is the first site talked about on IPThieves. Myguitarspace.com just happens to be the most recent site we’ve come across that deserves mention here.
Billed as “a home on the web for guitarists of all levels,” the site appears to be set up to be a social network for guitarists, but since it’s still in “beta” it’s hard to determine where exactly the site plans on going.
One thing you’ll notice right off the bat when you go there is that you can’t really do much of anything until you register, which definitely is a negative for a fledgling social network. However, once you do register you get access to most of the things you’d expect from a network like this.
The real meat on the site though are the video lessons. For the most part, there’s not too much here that isn’t already available on YouTube (in fact, they recommend their users upload the videos to YouTube or Google Videos and embed them on myguitarspace). The differentiating factor between them and just browsing youtube is that they are acting as a filter of content, making it much easier to find quality guitar videos than browsing through youtube alone.
Of course, myguitarspace is treading into some copyright infringement issues with the song lessons they offer - and this is where the site has its best chance to shine. Guitar World’s new “legal” guitar tab website does much the same thing, and although they don’t appear to have licenses for videos, they’ve been able to keep posting them. So, until some sort of legal action happens (assuming myguitarspace even pays it much mind), it has great potential to succeed as one of the new guitar communities.
