Music Industry Seems To Make Smart Decision Shock!

The New York Times reports that at least one guitar tab site should be back on-line soon:

Last year popular sites like Olga.net, MxTabs.net and others — where users post tablature, usually called "guitar tabs," for rock songs — suspended operations after the music publishing industry threatened them with copyright infringement lawsuits. Under the new initiative, MxTabs, which is owned by MusicNotes, will share an undisclosed portion of advertising revenue with music publishers, who in turn will give a portion to artists.

This looks like good news to me and only the truly curmudgeonly would deny artists their share of any advertising revenue, assuming it gets to them, anyway.

There are a couple of odd things about the article on close inspection and one is that it seems that publishers probably could make any money out of selling tabulature anyway, at least not with the range that the amateur sites have so it seems as though they are using others hard work as a source of free money, so business as usual then.

And that, in a way is the other odd thing, the people getting paid, the publishers and the site managers aren't actually doing a great deal. The kids in their bedrooms transcribing their new favourite bands' latest track are treated almost disdainfully and yet it's their work, accurate or not and debates on creativity notwithstanding, that's making money for everyone else.