Internet Sharing of Chords, Lyrics Targeted (off the front page)

[superbassman2000]

just a question, but how can they do this?
from what i read, they want to take lyrics and chords off the internet, but how can they do that?
can you actually own a chord progression?

[Pacman]

Originally Posted by superbassman2000

can you actually own a chord progression?

Nope.

[bucephylus]

I was just reading the release that the Music Publishers Association is attempting to shut down access to lyrics and chord charts on the Internet. What a crock. I wonder how much money they pay to Muddy Waters' estate, and how much goes towards president Lauren Keiser's multiple BMW's.

The begininning of dark times is when the Nazis out there start controlling information.

[DaftCat]

Lyric sites are just more low-hanging fruit. Easy for the MPA to pick on.

[Kelly Lee]

OMFG! This is just pathetic. Well comrades, its getting bad! BTW, here is the link to the article Superbassman is referring to: Internet sharing of chords, lyrics targeted

How can you legally stop someone from sharing their interpretation of how a song is played or what the lyrics are?

The lyrics are easy enough to figure out anyways. To me, the industry should have to prove that the lyrics were taken from a copyrighted work. In other words, prove it was copied from the artist website or album cover. I don't see them being capable of doing that.

Most tabs are inaccurate and legitimate tabs/sheet music would not be, right? So, how can they prove someone has infringed upon a copyright when it doesn't match the official sheet music?

The music industry has just put another nail in their own coffin IMO.

[NJL]

Maybe because if this, the playing level of musicians will actually go up. Musicians will actually have to use their ear and mind to learn a tune.

[SomecallmeTim]

Originally Posted by NJL

Maybe because if this, the playing level of musicians will actually go up. Musicians will actually have to use their ear and mind to learn a tune.

Or they'll just buy the book with the the chords in it.

[NewWaveBasser]

Does this mean cover bands will eventually become illegal?




They could be next

[d8g3jdh]

Originally Posted by Kelly Lee

What, this is old news! Superbassman posted at 8:05 about this in OT:Internet Sharing of Chords, Lyrics Targeted (off the front page)

uh, that link goes to this thread. perhaps the threads were moved.

Talkbass, quick, delete the tab section of the site! This to me seems pretty dumb, but i still think its better to be safe than to lose the site entirely.

[Kelly Lee]

Originally Posted by Grug

uh, that link goes to this thread. perhaps the threads were moved.

The two threads were merged. I'll go back and delete my other post though.

[bucephylus]

There are likely to be several practical issues with this.

The first is that the MPA, or any of its member companies, do not offer and most likely do not plan to offer commercially available products that would meet the needs of practicing musicians. The main reason for this is that practicing musicians do not constitute a sufficient market to justify the marketing and product development costs. This is simple arithmetic. It would be interesting to know who is doing the bulk of the downloading; possibly young adults with an interest in the music, who either don't play or play as a hobby/learning activity.

If the MPA got its act together and offered comprehensive collections of the various types of music performed as live covers, the way the Chuck Sher Real Books address the Jazz performance market, I'd be the first person to stand in line to buy them at a reasonable cost. However, they won't offer such products, which makes this recent effort nothing more than mis-directed time spent on what amounts to a money grab for tunes that they don't actually pay most of the royalties for anyhow. It is disgusting how corporate executives get a sense of entitlement to anything they can attach their greedy little fingers to. I guess where I am coming from is watching ASCAP/BMI send their pawns around to small clubs in the more rural areas extorting "performance royalties" from them on the grounds that live bands were generally expected to be performing copywritten material; and essentially shutting the live music down, because the club/restaurant owners don't make enough on the entertainment to pay the extortion costs.

One of the things that stands to be lost is some of the older pieces which just fall off the radar. For example, there is this old blues tune by Slim Harpo called Teeny Neeny Nu (whatever that means) that I recently had to look up to locate lyrics. Elimination of internet access to this kind of information will most likely have a chilling effect on the performance of such tunes in the clubs in the long run. Why? Because the MPA will never create an accessible library for all the old tunes. There are too many of them.

I also don't agree with the (macho) suggestion that musicians should figure out everything by ear. Practicing musicians have great ears, that is a baseline. However, in the interest of getting large numbers of new tunes tight as quickly as possible, it is also typical to communicate with each other on paper. We need this resource, And, while putting marks on paper is what copyright law is all about, this product area is too large for too small a market. Perhaps the right answer would be to create such products via a non-profit arts oriented sponsor, like the NPR/PRI sponsorship in conjunction with the MPA. Come to think of it, it might be interesting to send such a suggestion to this Lauren Kaiser and see what the response might be.

I guess my bottom line is that if the MPA is intending to shut down open access, they need to be making equal efforts to ensure reasonable access for those who need it. Otherwise, the effort is not credible.

[bucephylus]

So, I just sent the message below to Ms. Keiser. We'll see what the response is. I'm not trying to speak for all of us, and I'm sure a bunch of TBer's won't even agree. So be it. Diversity is a marvelous thing. You can send your own letters. Their contact information is:

http://www.mpa.org/about/officers.html

Ray Brown once said that one of the real factors to being a great musician is knowing a whole lot of songs.

My message text:

Hello Ms. Keiser,

As a practicing musician of some 35+ years, I have some concerns about your comments and efforts regarding shutting down internet access to Lyrics and Chord Progressions on the Internet.

These are communications tools needed by practicing musicians to keep the art form of live popular music healthy. So, musicians need reasonable access to this body of information. One example of a commercial product aimed at this market is the series of Real Books published by Chuck Sher Publications, which serves the market for Jazz Performance, and provides a fairly extensive library for that art form at reasonable cost.

Unfortunately, similar products do not exist for the broader and rather more general popular music performed throughout the world in typical nightclubs. This is particularly a concern for some of the older and more obscure blues repertoire, which is one of the underpinnings of modern popular music. One of my concerns is that if you succeed in shutting down access to this information, much of the more obscure material may become permanently lost.

So, my main question for you is whether you intend to establish any kind of alternative system which maintains capability for access to this information, or are you just planning to shut down the current system? My second concern is that a reasonable tool will not be offered to the market of practicing perfromance musicians. Can you please comment on your organization's efforts to ensure that such tools are available at reasonable costs? It is important to the credibility of your business stewardship that equal or greater consideration be given to meeting the needs of the practicing community of artists as a significant part of the overall solution.

Thank you for your consideration of these points. I look forward to your response.

[superbassman2000]

I guess i just don't understand...i was thinking about this in class today, and i was thinking of songs where i would question if the MPA is able to take the lyrics off the website.
An example i was thinking of is Rage Against the Machine's "Testify". There are probably hundreds of others but this one came to mind. In the bridge in the end, the singer (shouter, i suppose would be more more appropriate) repeats the phrase, "Who controls the past, controls the future, who controls the present, controls the past." As most people probably already know, this is from the book 1984. now what i don't get is that just because RATM said it, now the MPA owns that phrase? I don't get it...and that may be for hundreds of songs...

And also for chords...like i said before...how can you own a chord progression? If thats ever the case, i call the I-IV-V chord progression. Thats mine now. Now 99% of all blues music cannot be played without my consent and 50% of your profits...that is messed up.

[Pacman]

Originally Posted by superbassman2000

And also for chords...like i said before...how can you own a chord progression? If thats ever the case, i call the I-IV-V chord progression. Thats mine now. Now 99% of all blues music cannot be played without my consent and 50% of your profits...that is messed up.

As I said before, you cannot copyright a chord progression. But, I suspect what they're after is the publication of lyrics and chords together, which could constitute a copyright infringement.

[Brad Barker]

Originally Posted by Pacman

As I said before, you cannot copyright a chord progression. But, I suspect what they're after is the publication of lyrics and chords together, which could constitute a copyright infringement.

alright, then. i call the I-IV-V coupled with the phrase "i woke up this mornin'..."

[Pacman]

Originally Posted by Brad Barker

alright, then. i call the I-IV-V coupled with the phrase "i woke up this mornin'..."

Ok, but I got dibs on "I got a woman..."

[superbassman2000]

i am going to boy band way and copyrighting the lyric "oh baby" and also the teenage female singer lyric "aaahhhhhhhhhhh oohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh lalalala!"

(in regard to their vocalizing before every song...)

[Bob Clayton]

it is pure crazy.

you cannot copyright a musician's view of the song. if you try to, then doesn't the version technically belong to them? because they made it up?

[Phil Smith]

I can see the copyright point about lyrics to a song one should probably get permission to publish those lyrics since they would be unique.

A chord progression is an entirely different thing all together and it gets really complicated depending on how things are voiced or even notated. How are you going to copyright iii vi ii V, I vi ii V, I IV I V?

I think Pacman's suspecions of them both being together is probably what they are after.

I have a stake in all of this as my site, www.realbook.us offers chord progressions to a number of standards with transposition thought he inital display of the charts are in figured bass notation. We shall see what comes of all of this.

[the_bassment]

i really hope this doesnt get throught cause im stuffed even getting a new set of strings and if i have o pay what can be up to $80 in aus far o book i only want one song out of there will be trouble!!!!!!!!!!!