by P. Brisdaine

Created on: November 14, 2008

Although not a popular reply, tablature websites should have to pay royalties to the artists. The band / artist created the song you are learning from tab. It's their virtual property. It's their song. Most offer guitar and bass tab for a nominal charge. In paying for your tab, you are telling the artist that their song(s) are still in somewhat of a demand. It gives the artist a vote of confidence. Aside from that you're helping keep that artist afloat by paying for such virtual property.

Consider if you were that artist that wrote that song and you found out a website you do not own is using your song to drive visitors to a website other than your own artist site. Most people assume professional musicians that are on the radio, on television or live are making a considerable amount of money and your use of one of the tabs isn't that big of a deal to the artist. Fact seems to be that many people feel that same way. Therefore, you feel justified in downloading the tab for free. Your one download won't hurt that artist. However, if everyone stated that, then you no longer are just one person using their tab for free. With that example, you can see it easily can end up with the artist's tab being used hundreds or thousands of times each year. That artist would have lost a substantial amount of money. It basically comes down to respecting that artist and helping them sustain their careers to give us even more good music.

Unofficial websites offering free tablature without giving the artist who wrote it no acknowledgement of their popularity and talents. Some of these tab and / or lyrical websites even charge a required monthly or annual fee to be members of their website for access to a library of tab and the owner of that song does not get one penny from the website.

Aside from the examples above, the artist doesn't have the capability to proof read the tab to be certain it is accurate prior to posting online. I've witnessed more than once that a tab online at one of these websites is partially or even completely incorrect chords, timing and / or lyrics. Typically at these type of websites, it's not maintained or monitored for inaccuracies. The website owner simply checks his / her website every one or two days. To where an artist might expect it to be monitored for inaccurate tab or lyric postings.

The most common of these type websites often offer for guitar, bass, keyboards and vocalists.

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