Music industry frets over popular guitar Web sites

By Mike Hughlett
Tribune staff reporter

December 8, 2006

Rob Balch sees himself as a music educator of sorts, and the thousands of guitarists who have flocked to his Web site would no doubt agree.

At Balch's Guitar Tab Universe, he posted the chords and finger positions for rock songs--all the information needed to crank out a version of anything from the Rolling Stones' "Wild Horses" to the latest U2 single.

Music publishers, though, see Balch very differently: He's helping people steal the copyrighted sheet music they sell. So over the past several months, they effectively shut down Guitar Tab Universe and several other sites like it.

The tussle over the online guitar tab, which is short for tablature, is another manifestation of the great clash between the freewheeling Internet and the cold reality of business law. It pits an industry struggling to combat what it sees as piracy against the Web ethos of swapping information for free.

A similar battle played out in the much bigger recorded music business, with the industry scoring significant victories. But just as the record industry still struggles to contain illegal song swapping, guitarists can still easily find free tabs online.

"I think we've made a noble effort, but it's somewhat of a drop in the bucket," said Larry Morton, president of Milwaukee-based Hal Leonard Corp., regarded by many as the world's largest printed music publisher.

Sheet music is a $1 billion a year business globally, Morton said. It's not clear how much revenue the industry is losing because of free tab sites.

"But [tablature] is a significant part of the print music business," he said. "We produce hundreds and hundreds of guitar books with tabs."

Until the Web came along, the sheet music industry's biggest enemy was the photocopier, Morton said. Free tab sites, which allow musicians to post and share song structures, "are the photocopier on steroids."

So earlier this year, the Music Publishers' Association and the National Music Publishers' Association, which respectively represent print music and recorded music publishers, went on the offensive.

They sent letters to nearly 20 tab sites, ones believed to be the largest, threatening legal action. Balch's site was one of them, and he acquiesced.

"I took it all down, even `Jingle Bells,'" he said. (The holiday classic is old enough to be free of U.S. copyright protection.)

Balch, 25, started Guitar Tab Universe in 1999 while he was in college and learning to play guitar. Before the crackdown, it averaged 360,000 unique visitors per month, according to ComScore Networks, a Web tracking firm. A tech consultant in Los Angeles, Balch ran the site as a hobby, generating enough ad revenue to cover costs.

In his view, swapping recorded music is a "black and white" issue; it's illegal. But sharing tabs "is completely different," he said. "It's educational. People don't even come up with the same tabs for the same song."

Indeed, a lot of tabs posted on Web sites contain errors, guitar players say, though even glitches are helpful, said Chad Belfor, a 33-year-old Chicago guitarist. "They can point you in the right direction."

Belfor, a stay-at-home dad and former college philosophy teacher, plays in a rock band.. A veteran musician, he can pick up tunes by ear, but he still uses tab sites to quickly learn songs to cover.

Tabs can be even more useful for budding guitarists who can't yet play by ear, particularly if they're struggling with formal music lessons, said Belfor, who has taught guitar.

"If you want to teach a young kid to play guitar, it's way better to teach them songs they know than to teach them theory."

Belfor and other guitarists said the idea that tab sites are illegal seems absurd. "If I write out tabs for a song I've heard by ear and then share with other people, it doesn't seem like I am infringing on intellectual property."

Lawyers say there may be an argument to be made for a sheet music exemption for educational purposes, though usually that applies to song excerpts only. Music publishers, though, are adamant: Tablature incorporates elements of an original work, and the law protects such "derivative" uses of copyrighted material.

Hal Leonard's Morton acknowledges it's hard for people to accept the idea. "I've gone over this with my friends and their kids," he said. He tells them free tab sites are taking from artists. "It's stealing."

So far, none of the shuttered tab sites has mounted a legal challenge. "That requires a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of time and energy," said Cathal Woods, who runs Online Guitar Archive, known as OLGA, one of the first free tab sites.

Woods, like Balch, is a guitarist whose site is a hobby; he works as a philosophy professor at Virginia Wesleyan College.

The sheet music industry has its own online presence. Wisconsin-based Musicnotes.com, for example, specializes in selling by-the-song sheet music on the Web. The site, which started in 1999, recently sold its 2 millionth download and has been growing fast, but free Web sites have hampered tab sales, Chief Executive Kathleen Marsh said.

Tabs on free sites are rudimentary compared to those on pay sites like Musicnotes, Marsh said.

For example, a Musicnotes tab for the Wilco song "The Late Greats" includes complete finger positions, notes, chords and lyrics, all neatly packaged. The same song on Ultimate-Guitar.com has no notations and crudely sketches out chord changes, some of which include subtle mistakes, according to a Musicnotes analysis.

The difference, of course, is that the guitar tab is free, while Musicnotes charges $4.95. Producing high-quality, error-free tablature is "a very involved and expensive task," Marsh said.

But many guitarists say they won't pay $5 when free tabs are easily available.

When Todd Kessler, a 24-year-old Chicago guitarist and songwriter, wants to cover a Bob Dylan tune, for example, he does a Google search of the phrases "Bob Dylan" and "tab" and the results pour out.

Ultimate-Guitar.com has 400 Dylan tabs. It's one of the largest free sites, but one that the music industry has failed to shut down. It's based in Russia, beyond the reach of U.S. copyright law. Several other sites are also based overseas, and they appear to benefit from the crackdown on U.S. sites.

According to ComScore, Ultimate-Guitar.com had 1.55 million unique visitors in October, up a healthy 84 percent from the same time last year.