Coldplay Tabs Available At Musicnotes Site For Free

Musicnotes Inc. said Thursday that it has reached agreements with “several thousand” music publishers that will allow the online digital sheet music provider to offer free guitar and drum tablature downloads through its new Web site.

Musicnotes of Madison will offer the downloads through MXTabs.net, to be launched this summer. The site was acquired by Guitar Tab L.L.C., a wholly owned subsidiary of Musicnotes, in March.

Guitar tablature, or tabs, are transcriptions of music presented in a text-based format that has become increasingly popular with guitarists online, Musicnotes said.

Separately, Musicnotes said it has contracted Rebel Digital, a new digital advertising and sales firm, to manage ad sales for MXTabs.net. The revenue produced by advertising will compensate copyright holders, allowing for free, legal guitar and drum tab downloads.

The pending launch of MXTabs.net will be the site’s second incarnation. The guitar tablature Web site voluntarily removed all guitar tabs in the summer of 2006. The removal came at a time when many similar Web sites that offered unlicensed transcriptions of copyright-protected songs were shut down because of pressure from the music industry.

Musicnotes said that its tablature licensing agreements include the rights for the catalogs of BMG Music Publishing, peermusic, Famous Music and Bug Music. The agreements cover songs from such artists as Coldplay, Linkin Park, Elvis Costello, The Guess Who and Willie Dixon.

http://washington.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/stories/2007/05/21/daily31.html