Tablature.... What the heck happened

[elwoodblue]

Can someone help clarify?
 
What makes a Standard tune (e.g. Perdido) a standard?
 Is it after a given amount of time , or a general concensus that this a timeless tune?
 
...and does this only apply to  jazz ; I can think of many Rock and Soul 'standards'.
 
...where do I send Micheal jackson's check when I show my son which order the E ,A and B7 go when playing 'Twist and shout'.
 
AUM(copyright pending)

[alembic_doctor]

Olie:  ever notice how freely Christians give away the music and charts for their stuff.  They want everyone to know and play their songs.  I just got some new CD's from Desparation Band and Lincoln Brewster.  They are Enhanced CDs and they have the charts for their music and even some instruction on how to play them.
 
I guess we know where the real treasure is.

[valvil]

Hi Doc,
 
I am not sure about the US, but in Italy (I believe it is similar in the rest of Europe) a cover band, (or an original group) will hand a list of their set (with the authors listed) to the club owners. The club hands over the set lists nightly and pays a  royalty fee (this varies from club to club) based on several factors to the local copyright collection society (SIAE in Italy, it would be Ascap or BMI here in US). The society then allocates the  royalty collected from that club to the songs from its  playlist database for that club.
 
Now about the Tab law. This is not really about stopping you, the customer, from having access to Tab, or sheet music. This is more about the companies having to enforce protection of their copyright; if you do not do protect your copyright you can legally lose it; an unscrupolous person can take advantage of that and it's been done more than once; they could start making copies of your work for sale and argue that since you did not defend it previously it means it's not that important to you and should go into public domain, thereby making their sale of your work legit.  
 
Also, music companies don't like seeing sites who, sure, may be giving tabs away for free to you, but often are making money themselves because of advertising and other things that bring in money (like selling data that they accumulate through traffic generated on the site). That's not fair, they are making money on the back of other people's work without their consent. And even if you are totally losing money while giving away tabs, it's still not legal, and the copyright protection issue  still arises.
     
What I'd like to see is the Music companies themselves offer this service, either by legally licensing it or by having it on their sites. I'd like it to be free, because I think it's great advertising  but I'd be willing to pay a fee of a few bucks a year for the service even though I'm trying to read more music and less tabs.
 
Valentino

[bsee]

In the US, at least locally, the bar owners pay annual licensing fees to ASCAP in order to have live entertainment.  No idea how universal the participation is, only that a couple guys I know fairly well do this.

[olieoliver]

You're right Doc. You can find tab for Christian music almost every where. Then again it's more about the message not the $.
 
Bob's correct about bar owners and ASCAP royalties. But I'm not sure how many actually do pay up.

[bigredbass]

Another thing brought home to me by living in Nashville and being waist-deep in songwriters:
 
This Napster era changed everything.  Monies to the music industry across the board for any given artist have shrunken dramatically.  While the major labels can sustain themselves and the artists can make a fortune from their live dates alone, songwriters are very dependent on the various royalties and fees, with no other way to make the living they used to make in this day of non-existent intellectual property rights.  That's why tab postings are vanishing.  Would YOU want to give away your income?
 
I never understand why people are so quick to steal music of artists they adore:  Would you pickpocket their wallet if you were backstage with them?  If you're taking music for free WITHOUT permission, that's exactly what you're doing.  How are tabs any different from buying the sheet music?
 
J o e y

[grateful]

IMHO, tabs are like reverse engineering, which is perfectly legal (the richest man on the planet made his money from buying a reverse engineered version of CP/M which was renamed MS-DOS!  Where are Digital Research today?).
 
I blame the Music Business, which has almost nothing to do with music (paraphrasing Garcia).
 
Mark

[keith_h]

As far as ASCAP goes they act much like the mob in my opinion. They send paid informants into clubs that have music and are not already paying them. They then give them the option of paying up back fees and buying an annual license. If the answer is no go to court. In some cases around here this has included performances of totally original music by the composer. The response from ASCAP was prove it in court and we'll make sure you lose. We have also had several cases of small coffee shops who have an acoustic player every couple of months get shaken down for annual licenses as ASCAP and BMI have no by the performance option. In these cases the shops just quit having music altogether as they can't afford the annual fees.  
 
I agree the copyright holder deserves to be paid for their work but there also need to be the realization that not everybody is a big time operation with loads of money. I've also seen some reports that indicate much of the ASCAP/BMI fees stay with them so who interest do the really look out for?  
 
Keith

[olieoliver]

While cooking breakfast this morning I was in a rather good mood and caught myself singing, Can't Get Enough, by Bad Company.
 
So I have but one question.......where do I send the check?

[keith_h]

Makes me wonder if the kitchen staff at a restaurant I used to go to would have to pay ASCAP fees. Back in the 80's we would eat at the Wool Growers Hotel  dinning room in Los Banos. The three women cooks in the kitchen would whistle songs together that you could hear in the dinning area. Since we were paying for the meal,  the cooks were getting paid and they were damn good entertainment does this constitute a paid performance?  
 
Keith

[rraymond]

Who Are The Brain Police?
 
Damn, another royalty payment!

[zach]

I just think taking down tabs is stupid since its very rare for one to be 100% correct anyway!  Are they next going to make you pay a royalty if your song's influenced by another artist?  If so I owe quite a bit of money to the allman brothers for every time i've told my guitarist to throw in an allman like twiddly bit.

[zach]

I just think taking down tabs is stupid since its very rare for one to be 100% correct anyway!  Are they next going to make you pay a royalty if your song's influenced by another artist?  If so I would owe quite a bit of money to the allman brothers for every time i've told my guitarist to throw in an allman like twiddly bit.
If they really want to stop tabs then they should produce an alternative, and so far the only tab books i've found are for the biggest bands such as red hot chili peppers and led zep.

[ndr_bass]

I think this is very short-sighted by the industry, not to mention greedy.  Ultimately, imitation is one of the main drivers of the music world.  Radio play, and perhaps now the internet, may start the process of building an audience, but it's the cover bands that sustain it.
 
TABs and transcriptions promote the spread of your music and don't have much monetary value until a significant threshold of popularity is reached.  Without cover bands, that threshold is only attainable by a very few well promoted acts.  
 
It seems disengenuous then to charge for the right to help popularize and therefore increase the value of the music.  Not to mention hypocritical...how many bands don't start by doing covers?  Of course, the bands have very little control of this copyright lunacy.  
 
To me this is a case of an industry eating its young.
 
(Message edited by NDR_bass on June 04, 2007)

[chuck]

An industry eating its young.
Very well put.
Chuck