...and no "Enter Sandman" either...

I’m sad to see the NMPA and the MPA have recently written to the lovely Olga to tell her to leave and desist from leading so many young men [and Dads] astray.

So what’s all the fuss about?

Essentially the music publishing biz [or the sorry bunch of lawyers who effectively run it] is moving to close down ‘tab’ sites in much the same way as they have tried to close mp3 sharing sites in the past. Olga is the biggest of these ‘tab’ sites. ‘Tab’ is short for tablature, which is a kind of comic-strip chord notation for the musically illiterate. By which I mean non-reading, as opposed to just lacking in taste….

This news comes hard on the heels of a recent report that sales of entry level guitars like Squire, second hand classics like Telecasters and Les Pauls, and costly investment items like Gretsch and older Fenders are all going through the roof.

To a large extent this is because the guitar is back in fashion for pop music and the kids are lovin’ it - Kaiser Chiefs, Artic Monkeys, Arcade Fire etc have seen to that. But a substantial part of the increase in guitar and amp sales is to the kind of middle aged dads [not using the word crisis here] who twenty years ago would have bought a gas guzzling sports car, hit the golf course, or joined the Masonic lodge. Now they get that Rickenbacker semi they always wanted and learn to play ‘Hey! Mr Tambourine Man’ from – you guessed it – a tab site.

Now there are arguments either way about the rights and wrongs of tab sharing sites; take a look at the comments on the BBC report and you’ll see what I mean. Essentially the publisher’s argument is that distributing free tabs decreases the potential income of the artist; which, on the surface, seems fair.

But tab sheets are almost useless without a recording of the original as a reference, so it should go without saying that any would-be Jimmy Page will have that in his walkman or iPod. And the tab user would never have bought the sheet music anyway; tabs, remember, are for people who can’t read music. So it looks like the lost income argument is flawed, at best.

Like many businesses, the music publishers clients [the artists] are distinct from their customers [you and me], and therefore have different agenda. But in these days when in practice there are really only three or four entertainment companies, it strikes me that the publishers should see themselves as part of a bigger picture. Pearson Media or Bertelsmann surely know that if I download the tabs for Stairway to Heaven then it’s likely I’ve already got the guitar and t-shirt to match; where their music publishing loses out, their guitar sales and online service provider stands to gain, perhaps by a healthy margin.

Meanwhile, those of you out there with teenage guitar heroes [even middle aged teenage guitar heroes] living in the loft, you might find yourself hearing a lot more amateurish racket than you have been!

Andrew "Blackmore" Mishmash