Think you've got a right to know the lyrics of your favourite songs?

[Tharrick]

Think again, ladies and gentlemen.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4508158.stm


Apparantly, you're not allowed to look up the lyrics of songs on the internet, at all, ever. Nor are you supposed to provide or download tabs.
Newsflash, entertainment industry. While you can get vocal, guitar, and piano sheet music (even when there's no ****ing piano/keyboard in the song), actually getting your hands on official bass tabs... well, I have NEVER seen a book with bass tabs in in a music shop, and I've been to some fairly large music shops.

So yeah, by looking up tabs or lyrics on the internet, you're infringing copyrights and apparantly depriving companies of income. Now the dicks are calling for JAIL TIME for people who tab music.

[TriggerHappi:D]

Are you serious? This is total bull crap. I've been to the closest Guitar Center near my house a couple of times, and I've seen books with bass tabs for like, bands and stuff. Yeah, I understand the whole not-allowed-to-download-music thing, but tabs or lyrics? That's crap. What next? We're not allowed to sing our favorite songs? Crappy garage bands aren't allowed to do cover songs before getting sued? What income are companies are people losing when they right down the lyrics of songs? Jail time, my slim bum! Excuse some people for wanting to idolize other people.

[Tharrick]

I've been to the closest Guitar Center near my house a couple of times, and I've seen books with bass tabs for like, bands and stuff.
All I've ever seen is the big guitar/vocal/keyboard/piano ones - never seen some bass sheet music before.

Here's an example of how much this is going to cost me to continue my musical hobby -

Say I want to learn some songs off Metallica's Master of Puppets album.
The book costs £19, but you have to add P&P because it's only really available for me via the internet.
I can already play 3 songs off that album. At most, I'll only want to learn another 2 - I just don't like the other ones enough to want to learn to play them
So, essentially, I'm paying up to £22 for 2 songs.
£11 per song.

I have NEVER wanted to learn enough songs off a single album to justify THAT expense.

[Dale Anthony]

For godsake, this is to put it bluntly ****ing pathetic. Reason being, I'm BARELY long gone from the days of being ultimate amateur, so I know what it's like playing guitar for the first time very clearly. I'm STILL not up to scratch so if they want to ruin my learning by pulling tabs off the internet then that's pretty damn screwed. What illegal activity could you possibly acomplish with tabs? Because face it...they only ever do things like this if they music companies feel they aren't gaining enough money in a certain area or it's illegal and they aren't getting paid. I think they're getting paid enough for us to buy their damn CDs.

And I totally agree Tharrick...not only can I barely understand tablatures written down but I'm hardly going to want to buy a book full of ONE album by one artist when for a start barely anyone in the WORLD is going to like every song off one album by the same artist.

[Auron-X]

Yeah I read about this awhile ago on another forum. It's really stupid too considering alot of the tabs are poeple's impression of the real one - alot of them maybe happen to do it by ear and work it out themselves =/ And as for lyrics i'm sure the same thing sometimes applies or they just use their booklet from the album to find out the lyrics. Sometime early last week I went to taborama.com to find some tab for a certain song and this crap came up (about copyright and infringement) and so I tried other random songs just to check it wasn't that one tab. This is really stupid, but some sites so far work I think only the really major sites are down for the moment or well have blocked all their tabs or something. I could understand music downloads, but lyrics and tabs? >.> And the whole thing about those music companies thinking they should get jail time is simply stupid.

[..::AJ::..]

technically, the tabs aren't the ones that the artists use, because they are provided by a guitar/bass player, as are the lyrics.

personally, this is the biggest pile of S**t i've ever heard...and if this so, set up a SMALL fee for obtaining an official tab....such as 50/60p...something little

i write tablature myself, and this is just ridiculous...so i guess i'm out of a pass time.

hopefully, this will pass over.

[Dale Anthony]

Basically corperations are cutting down more and more on what people enjoy and adding fees to them so that they can reap the rewards for something they personally don't deserve. It's like being fined for playing with a ball on a field. All that really is in most cases is a way to get money from nothing.

I think what this really is, is music corperations are having a bit of a baby-cry because of all the music downloading that they've decided to pull money from somewhere else. Well...if that's the case, I'm all for downloading MORE music.

[Grae]

What the crap? They can't do this, it's totally pathetic.

For one, tabs are made by fans, they may be copied from a music sheet, or they could listen to the song by ear and work it out (It is possible you know! Bastards...) now I can understand the fan copying it fromthe book they'd be a little angry, but doing it by ear? That's fan material right there, they probably won't have it perfect but theres nothing wrong with that.

Another one, regarding lyrics, most albums have lyrics in the book, it's just basically information, the internet is a recourse of information, so if you're going to stop people putting lyrics on a webpage they copied out of a cdcover then you may as well shut down the whole internet.

Of course sometimes the lyrics aren't int he book, the lyrics aren't released at all, so fans have to listen to the song and transcribe them, they really shouldn't be able lto do anything about that because the fan hasn't copied anything that exists yet.

Personally I think this is all just a spin off from the Metallica vs Napster shit that went down a few years ago, now they want to make sure people can't get their hands ona ny part of a song unless they pay for it. It's quite pathetic really, even if they did shut down tab sites people still wouldn't buy that much sheet music.

Sandro del Greco, who runs Tabhall.co.uk, said the issue was not serious enough to warrant jail time and sites like his were not necessarily depriving publishers of income.

Hey!! I know that guy! :P and I think he's right, it's not serious enough to warrant a sentence for jail time. But I'll also add in by saying this is complete bullshit. I have 500 songs worth of tablature in my house sitting on top of my Marshall in my room, I welcome whoever it is to come and get them.

[Chris]

Yay for bassists who will never be able to learn songs!

Next they'll be saying all bands that do covers will have to be put in jail, including tribute acts to groups like Queen and that.

But seriously, guitarists have it easy still - they can just get the tab book. Bassists and drummers are ****ed - although drums you can just listen to the song easily to get the beats and stuff.

But, I s'pose it means people will try to figure out songs for themselves... so... learn more...

But still, if they're gonna do this - AT LEAST MAKE ****ING BASS TAB BOOKS.

Grr.
Chris is going to go kill something.

Oh, but Ultimate Guitar can't be touched - it is russian and pays royalties to the artists as said on their forum. So yay! Tabs are still around.

[Grae]

Ultimate Guiatr pays royalties? I had no idea. I also didn't know they were russian. Ahh the motherland, solutions for all of life problems.

[Dale Anthony]

Yeah, we can thank Russia for everything these days. Got a mob after you? Run into Russia and let them sort the guys out. Got a nuclear heat-seeking warhead on your back? Let Russia destroy it with 1'000 ton atom bombs. Need to get tabs from the internet but it's illegal because the states have music industries full of greedy twats? Russia is the place to be!

But on a more serious note, yeah Chris was the one who told me they were Russian but if they're Russian that would mean the whole UGO network that runs it is. I never would have guessed. To be honest, I'm glad there's some people in the World willing to do something right.

[Trigani-Maru-Suke]

this is just stupid. What is wrong with looking up lyrics for songs? Some artists put the lyrics in the book on for cd's, i'm guessing they are going to tell us we arean't allowed to look at those lyrics etheir eh?

[Tharrick]

Oh, but Ultimate Guitar can't be touched - it is russian and pays royalties to the artists as said on their forum. So yay! Tabs are still around.

Alas, UG is crap and doesn't have tabs for the songs I want, while I KNOW that MXtabs does because I've been there before. Only MXtabs is now closed down.

Some artists put the lyrics in the book on for cd's, i'm guessing they are going to tell us we arean't allowed to look at those lyrics etheir eh?
Oh, you're allowed to LOOK at them, since you've bought them and that's money in the company's pockets. You just can't reproduce them in any way, apparantly.

[Auron-X]

Well I haven't seen any tab sites being fully closed down but everytime you try to view a tab some page about copyright and infringement comes up (well that's the case for Taborama). And wasn't this meant to happen in 06 anyway (according to the article or something like that xP).

[Tharrick]

Well I haven't seen any tab sites being fully closed down

MXtabs, the main source of my tabs, is fully closed down.

[Grae]

http://www.tabrobot.com ?

[Dusk]

I kinda agree with this being a good idea, I mean it took people time and effort to make them, only for people who are too cheap to buy the tabs or whatever they are, just because they want to learn a few songs, in that case they should just make a site to sell seperate ones, but this rule isnt going to last anyway, there will always be websites with tabs and whatever it is, so they should concentrate on more impotant issues.

[Tharrick]

people who are too cheap to buy the tabs

****ed if I'm going to shell out £10 just to learn a song, and sit around twiddling my thumbs for days waiting for it to even be dispatched to me. **** that for a laugh.


http://www.tabrobot.com ?

Great if it had anywhere near the selection that MXtabs had.

[Auron-X]

I kinda agree with this being a good idea, I mean it took people time and effort to make them, only for people who are too cheap to buy the tabs or whatever they are, just because they want to learn a few songs, in that case they should just make a site to sell seperate ones, but this rule isnt going to last anyway, there will always be websites with tabs and whatever it is, so they should concentrate on more impotant issues.
But you see some of these tabs people listened to the song and worked it out, probably just to figure it out for themselves then decided to sumbit it or whatever lol. Some however people just copied off a tab book =/ And it's also for lyrics which are kind of stupid since i'm sure alot people know all the lyrics to their oh-so-favourite songs so again did it off by heart =/

[~Manick~]

MXtabs was also the main source of my tabs...Sucks to hear its been closed down. And Tharrick, alot of the guitar tab books i've bought come with bass tabs aswell.... some bands actually put both sets of tabs in the same book, so check the guitar version if at all possible.

There will always be tabs available on the internet. So no worrying. Just like they said they was going to put a stop to downloading music. :)

[Tharrick]

And Tharrick, alot of the guitar tab books i've bought come with bass tabs aswell

None of the tab books I've ever seen have had bass tabs in them. Not a single one ¬_¬


There will always be tabs available on the internet. So no worrying. Just like they said they was going to put a stop to downloading music.
Ironically, said just as Grokster (I think) yielded to their pressure and closed down.

[Auron-X]

Yeah i've still seen a few sites still open, maybe not as big as other ones which were closed down but atleast they're still around - I doubt they could close every single one of them down and stop lyrics and tabs on being put on the net.

[Hideto]

They're probably going to start saying that bands who play in pubs and clubs can't do covers anymore next. This whole thing is getting way out of hand.