Here’s my response to all the ‘intellectual property’ arguments that some are bound to make:
I don’t see how this is the same as downloading music. The tab does you no good if you don’t have the chops to play it anyway, and if you can pull it off, it’s not like you’re going to book a gig at the corner club and play Pink Floyd tunes, and charge $200 a ticket as if it was really Floyd. There’s no comparison to the actual music.
The music industry is digging it’s own grave here.
Do you know of any bands who actually encourage people to learn their songs? Seems like a smart thing to do marketing-wise- much the way the Dead allowed and encouraged bootleg recordings at their events.
In the days of vaudeville, sheet music was where the money was. And there was payola. Payola to get singers to sing their songs on stage AND payola to put shills in the audience (or in the bar up the street) to sing the songs.
The public would see it as a “popular” song and buy the sheet music.
When records first came out, the Supreme Court said that there was no royalty due to the songwriter. That changed.
And when radio came along (and replaced live performers with records), the Supreme Court said that no money was due the artist on the record when the record was played on the air.
The industry has bought and paid for the decisions that have come down for a hundred years.