What To Do With A Guitar Tab Domain?

[sjaguar13]

I have a domain for guitar tabs, but I don't know what to do with it. I was thinking about the obvious guitar tab site like, http://www.MetalTabs.com. After looking at some other sites, mainly http://www.OLGA.net, to get some ideas of how to get tabs quick, I found plenty of sites using the same tab. Then I thought about making a search engine for tabs (which a few already exist) to search the main tab sites because that's where most of the tabs come from anyway. I thought about making a guitar tab site that used images instead of the crappy text representation of tab, but I don't really see an efficient way of doing that.

I looked for a guitar tab CMS script, but couldn't find one. All I found was a project to make one that started in 2003 and seems to have been abondoned. I thought about making my own CMS script for the guitar tab webmasters and just have the domain be about that. The only problem would be people would probably want to get a database full of tabs, so the script is useful right "out of the box".

The problem I see is that it would take a while to get as many tabs as OLGA has. Plus, that's the main site for tab anyway. It would be like an auction site competing against eBay. Another site, http://www.Ultimate-Guitar.com, seems to be doing well and also has a lot of tabs. MetalTabs looks like it gets it tabs from users, but my domain isn't specific to one genre of music.

[NameJet]

Originally Posted by sjaguar13

I have a domain for guitar tabs, but I don't know what to do with it. I was thinking about the obvious guitar tab site like, http://www.MetalTabs.com. After looking at some other sites, mainly http://www.OLGA.net, to get some ideas of how to get tabs quick, I found plenty of sites using the same tab. Then I thought about making a search engine for tabs (which a few already exist) to search the main tab sites because that's where most of the tabs come from anyway. I thought about making a guitar tab site that used images instead of the crappy text representation of tab, but I don't really see an efficient way of doing that.

I looked for a guitar tab CMS script, but couldn't find one. All I found was a project to make one that started in 2003 and seems to have been abondoned. I thought about making my own CMS script for the guitar tab webmasters and just have the domain be about that. The only problem would be people would probably want to get a database full of tabs, so the script is useful right "out of the box".

The problem I see is that it would take a while to get as many tabs as OLGA has. Plus, that's the main site for tab anyway. It would be like an auction site competing against eBay. Another site, http://www.Ultimate-Guitar.com, seems to be doing well and also has a lot of tabs. MetalTabs looks like it gets it tabs from users, but my domain isn't specific to one genre of music.

I have a few tab domains as well and have been looking for the same thing. It definately requires something custom but could probablly be written as a module/hack to run off of most CMS.

The potential for tab sites is great, as there is a large amount of seach traffic for tablature. The problem is, guitar tablature sites by definition offer tabs for free.

If you expect to profit from advertising, remember that guitar and sheet music affiliate programs usually offer laughable commissions. Check the advertiser's on ultimate-guitar.com when you are searching the tabs - you'll probablly notice they have nothing to do with guitar playing.

[nickb]

is there not real big problems with tab sites at the moment. i was reading somewhere yesterday that a few had already had legal procedings against them

[dotDan]

Nick, you're right. I don't mean to hijack the thread, but the MPA is starting to target tab sites [and they are legitimately illegal].

Do some research before you make a move. I'd sit on the domain for a while and see what happens.

[NameJet]

Originally Posted by dotDan

Nick, you're right. I don't mean to hijack the thread, but the MPA is starting to target tab sites [and they are legitimately illegal].

Do some research before you make a move. I'd sit on the domain for a while and see what happens.

Originally EMI managed to get OLGA shut down temporarily in the bad old days (late 90's) but OLGA resurfaced. It looks like the tab collection has been untouched since then.

I think its fair to assume that tabs copied from printed transcriptions are most likely infringing on intellectual property rights. I'm not sure about the ones created by individuals who take the time to write out their own versions.

However, infringing or not the entertainment industry interest groups will probablly always have tab sites in their crosshairs albeit low on their list of priorities.

A lot of popular tab sites are based outside the US (ie, metaltabs.com).