Reply #15: Lyrics.com Isn't Exactly Underground [View All]

When I was a kid and there was a lyric I couldn't figure out (and they weren't in the lp liner sheet) I'd go to a store that sold music instruments and scores and look it up - if they had the music for that album. I wouldn't have bought the book, couldn't afford it and anyway I didn't even own an instrument.

In my 20s, when I had a guitar, I would sometimes buy a book, anthologies, usually, or, when I couldn't figure out something for myself, learn chords for particular songs from friends who already knew and played them.

Aside from record sales, it's the publishing of the material - these books - where publishers make their real money. And in my recollection they cost a lot more than the albums did - that's what made anthologies a bargain.

I wouldn't have a problem with publishers going after those sites that are commercially re-publishing the music w/out being contracted to. But it would be very short-sighted and possibly VERY hypocritical of the MPA to go after the non-comms.

A record label with a publishing arm stands to eventually make money from budding musicians - and it would fly in the face of their attempts to campaign for more federal money for school music programs. It just might give someone - like, me - the idea that their main reason for pushing for more music education is to drive sales more than it is to bring something to those students' lives.