Free the Lyrics

Who is most affected by illegal lyrics and tab sites? The songwriters? I doubt it. The publishing companies? Not in the general sense of the term “publisher” which is all about the administration of copyrights, not just print rights. Specifically, I think the niche of print music publishing is getting hurt by the internet. Some agencies that specialize in printed music include Hal Leonard, Cherry Lane Music Group, and Music Sales Group.

Does anyone report the revenue generated through sheet music sales? I know it’s not a significant portion of the overall music industry, but obviously it’s being affected even more than usual. The MPA’s threats (December 2005) imply a bit of desperation. I find it hard to believe they are just now feeling the effects of the internet. Lyrics and tab sites have been around for over a decade, and there have been efforts to shut them down before, but nothing that put a dent in all the unauthorized sites out there.

Even though publishers modernized their operations a little bit by offering digital sheet music sales, the cat is out of the bag with lyrics and tab sites. Is the publishing industry ready to participate in this new paradigm? There are already companies trying to make lyrics licensing a reality.

But what about tablature? It’s here that things get a bit difficult, from both the industry’s perspective and the tab transcriber perspective.

Industry: Anything that diminishes the relevancy of print music publishers is likely to be met with a bit of resistance, so tab sites aren’t exactly going to have an easy time licensing content.

Tab writers: It’s their opinion that tab sites are comprised of fan interpretations of songs, so what they’re doing isn’t a breach of copyright, especially if the site doesn’t make any money. That’s open to debate, but the bottom line is that you have print publishers that don’t want to license the content for fear of losing sheet music business, and you have tab writers who don’t think they need to license the content anyway. What you end up with is a situation where the content won’t be licensed, and you have tab sites are shutting down, or continue to run with the fear of being faced with legal repercussions.

Looks like a lose/lose situation.

I was wondering when someone would submit TabAid.com to digg. Looks like someone did.

With a community as united as the digg.com community, if we all sign the petition and support this one unified direction of counter attack, we can at least organize a voice! There’s also a petition which takes about 2 seconds to sign up for. Looks like its well organized and exactly what we need.

read more | digg story

SongMeanings.net, in their Copyright Issues page, excerpts U.S. copyright law to make the following claim:

This basically states, that if SongMeanings remains public, stays free, keeps displaying the copyright notice on every page, and doesn’t claim ownership to any of the copyrighted material, it may remain archiving and displaying copyright lyrics.

Found another petition. keep lyric and tab sites on the web!

I’m not sure what will be done with the petition once it reaches its goal of 5,000. Will it be sent to someone?

I have to comment about something in the petition writer’s myspace rant.

if these laws go into effect, then they will have to jail people whistling songs on the sidewalk, cover bands, garage bands, karoke singers, etc. this is outrageous.

Ah, the old “what’s next” argument. Often comprised of hyperbole (”whistling”) and actuality. In this case, the actuality isn’t that cover bands and karaoke singers are being arrested, but that the venues (e.g. bars) can get in trouble for not paying the royalties on the music. I previously mentioned an article about a Washington, D.C. bar taken to court for not paying fees to ASCAP. Or how about a Fresno bar being sued for not licensing songs that BMI represents.

Tab-Archive.com and TABfly.com are still online however both considering what is the best course of action to take, they do not wish to close however will if they are forced too as they cannot afford to pay royalties for the tabs they offer.

read more | digg story

Here are some resources around the web where you can read opinions and discussions about the lyric/tab site crackdown, and also some related general information.

Articles:
Song sites face legal crackdown - The BBC News article that started it all
Labels Target Lyrics Sites
Publisher Apologizes To Online Lyrics Tool

Sites:
TabAid - A grassroots effort to organize gigs to protest the tab site crackdown
subject: music.organization - A non-profit organization that will be started to address tablature and copyright
LyricFind, Inc. - A service that will allow lyrics sites to license content
MPA - Music Publishers’ Association of the United States
NMPA - National Music Publishers’ Association
HFA - Harry Fox Agency

Forums - specific sections or topics:
MPA and the Future of Tablature Sites [forum.powertabs.net]
Selling iLyric.net [geekvillage.com]
Crackdown on lyrics sites, guitar tabs and song scores [geekvillage.com]

Forums - general:
forum.powertabs.net
taboramaforum.com
musicianforums.com
forum.musictalk.com
ultimate-guitar.com/forum
geekvillage.com/forums

Some search terms for Google News, digg, and technorati
Lauren Keiser [Google] [digg] [technorati]
lyrics sites [Google] [digg] [technorati]
MPA [Google] [digg] [technorati] (careful with this one, because MPA stands for other things)
tabs [Google] [digg] [technorati]
tablature [Google] [digg] [technorati]

Lyrics sites still up
azlyrics.com
lyrics.astraweb.com
lyrics.com (directory, links to other sites with lyrics)
sing365.com
lyricsfreak.com
lyricsworld.com
lyricsdownload.com
lyricsplanet.com
letssingit.com
lyricsstyle.com
seeklyrics.com
ilyric.net
lyricswiki.org
getlyrics.com

Tabs still up
ultimate-guitar.com
guitartabs.cc
g-tab.com

Tabs taken down
mxtabs.net (redirects to sputnikmusic.com)
taborama.com
powertabs.net (see also Power Tab Community FAQ)
dylanchords.com
lennonchords.com

I think Darryl covered a lot of information in the Q&A he did for mredkj.com, yet there are still a lot of unanswered questions. He has joined in on a discussion at webmaster forum geek/talk: Crackdown on lyrics sites, guitar tabs and song scores (look for user Darryl)

His posts shed some light on just how complicated it is to license lyrics for the web, and how it’s going to cause some limitations at first. If the MPA follows through on their promise to crackdown on lyrics sites, the ones that survive are going to need to reorganize how they operate - diversify, new revenue streams, etc. - in order to cover the costs of licensing the lyrics.

As for tab sites, it’s Darryl’s opinion that they won’t be given as many opportunities to license content, because they’re seen as competition to sheet music sales. There is a fundamental difference between the fan tabs community and the official sheet music business, so I hope the music industry doesn’t just dismiss tab sites as being unimportant.

Darryl Ballantyne is president of LyricFind, Inc., which specializes in lyric search services. Mr. Ballantyne agreed to answer some of my questions, and to help explain what’s going on with the lyric site crackdown from his perspective.

I put up the interview at mredkj.com.
Interview with Darryl Ballantyne

The wikipedia entry for Music Publishers’ Association of the United States (MPA) could use a little work. Currently it only says, “The Music Publishers’ Association of the United States is the arm of the music industy (sic) responsible for the production and distribution of sheet music.”

Here are a few rough ideas of what the MPA entry needs.

• Link the term “sheet music” by using the wiki notation [[sheet music]]
• Founded in 1895 (source) - Try to find out more about its history
• In the current entry, the phrasing “responsible” is a little misleading. The MPA doesn’t itself produce and distribute sheet music, but rather facilitates communication between the copyrights holders, the publishers that produce it, the businesses that distribute it, and the users of the material.
• The MPA initiates PR campaigns to make people aware of current copyright laws. For example, their COPY-FREE ZONE program was started to curb the photocopying of sheet music in the music departments in schools around the country. (source)

Shortly after I wrote about tabaid.tk, I found out the TabAid effort has shifted focus over to TabAid.com.

So, to summarize again, the idea is to coordinate a series of gigs by bands around the world under the “TabAid�? logo. The purpose is to oppose the MPA’s recent threats against tablature sites.

From their Concerts page:

Show your support for TabAid by attending one of the concerts. These concerts are being run by musicians who use tablature everyday to learn new music.