01 Jul MXTabs reopens, offers user-generated content related to popular music
Madison, Wis. — MXTabs has relaunched its web site featuring user-generated transcriptions of guitar, bass and drum parts of popular songs, after coming up with a new business model to address copyright concerns that led it to close in 2006.
MXTabs says its users have posted over 50,000 tablatures—text-based renditions of notes played, as opposed to sheet music. To allow its users to post tablatures for copyrighted songs, the firm has licenses with Alfred Publishing, Sony/ATV, Universal MGB, Domino Publishing, BUG Music, and other publishers, and it pays publishers and songwriters out of advertising revenue. The site was started in 1999, and after its closing in 2006, MXTabs’ assets were acquired by Musicnotes, a sheet-music downloads company also located in Madison.