The Smiley Smile Message Board

I don't know if this is already well-known among guitarists out there, it was news to me, but the music industry has been forcing sites that host guitar tabs for pop songs to either remove the tabs or shut down.   Apparently, this has been going on for a few months now.  I've never visited such sites very often, because I don't play guitar very often (and try to figure things out by ear, when I can).  But I know a lot of people play guitar very seriously, and often seek out these tabs.  So, if you're one of them, you might as well try to get them while you can, because the effort to get rid of them has been pretty successful, so far.  Online paid, legit tab publishers are few and far between, and can charge as much as $5 for each tab.  One quoted $800 as the average cost of publishing each tab, and it's doubtful every song will get that investment made.  The article is in the New York Times, which requires registration. Here's the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/21/technology/21ecom.html

How absolutely ridiculous.

I didn't know about this either...not sure what the huge deal is.  As far as I knew there is nothing illegal about free tabs.  Weird.

I think this may be a prelude to taking down free song lyric sites.  There are some major music database companies that are compiling lyrics for download, for a fee,  as part of or a supplement to paid downloading of songs.  A lot of money and time is being invested in these projects.  Maybe the tab sites are being used as test cases, because they're not as widespread as lyric sites.  It seems really stupid and anti-consumer, but it's not surprising for an industry that shut down free music downloading sites by suing the end users.