[OFF] Re: We had to destroy the industry to save it

[Albert Bouchard]

50 years ago most of a songwriter's earnings came from printed sheet
music.
That market has diminished dramatically. At one time publishers would
give out
huge advances to sign a writer to their company, not anymore. I'm not
sure about
the reasons for this but I think the availability of these tab and
lyric websites are
as much a reaction to the failure of publishers to make the material
online easily
available and affordable as anything else. What we're seeing her is
more some
publisher's association gearing up for an alternate delivery system.
The problem with
iTunes is the lack of printed material to go with your tunes. How
hard would it be to
include a link for publishing material to go with your song? But
don't think the artist
doesn't get much from these sales. They do. I should know.

On Dec 9, 2005, at 6:57 PM, Alex S. Garcia wrote:

>> It's a tough one really.  From the point of view of the consumer,
>> I would
>> like everything for free!  However, lyrics are no different from
>> books or
>> other copyrighted works.
>
> I'm not so sure about that. I mean, look at the facts: 99% of the
> time you
> will now have the lyrics included when you buy a CD. Doesn't this
> mean that
> they are included in the price, or, technically speaking, that they
> are
> offered for free if you buy the CD? Of course, this brings up another
> question: why look up the lyrics if you already have the album with
> them? One
> could conclude that only people with pirated copies are looking for
> the
> lyrics, but this isn't necessarily true. I mean there could be
> plenty of
> reasons for looking up lyrics: the printed copy might be difficult
> to read
> (characters too small, weird font, etc) or more simply a listener
> might want
> to have it on their computer for easier access and not want to
> bother with
> typing it themselves (copy-pasting would be much easier, heheh)...
> It's also
> possible, for older albums, that the listener owns the original
> release,
> without the lyrics, and that he doesn't feel like buying a
> rerelease just to
> have the lyrics...
>
> Tabs, though, are an entirely different story since they don't
> offer those in
> the booklets (yet?), but still... this seems to me like a really
> stupid move,
> and most likely done for the wrong reasons... like it says on that
> page,
> they're bitter about how things have gone with filesharing, so it
> looks to me
> like they're doing this mostly as a way to compensate/get revenge/
> whatever
> word you want to use, but you get the idea.
>
>> They are protected and they are a source of
>> income for the author, composer, etc.  I don't know if war is being
>> declared.  More that it's not as "peaceful" as it once was.
>
> Seriously. How big a market is this? I must have bought one or two
> "tab
> books" (or whatever they're called) in my life... granted, I'm not a
> musician, but this can't possibly be that big a market, can it? I
> dunno, it
> just sounds to me like a really poor excuse. I really doubt the
> artists are
> expecting to earn a living out of selling tabs in any case. Heck,
> I'm even
> wondering if they actually earn anything out of it? I wouldn't be
> surprised
> if all the earnings from those sells just went to the labels or
> whatnot.
>
>
>
> Alex.
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