Guitar World to launch groundbreaking rights-cleared guitar tabs web site
December 19, 2007
Tabs can be seen pay-per-view, downloaded or free
New York City, NY/South San Francisco, CA (December 19, 2007) -- Future US’ Guitar World, the world’s biggest magazine for guitarists, is launching a web site by holiday time 2007 devoted to rights-cleared rock guitar tabs and transcriptions funded by pay-per-view, pay-per-download and ad supported models, it was announced today by editorial director Brad Tolinski.
Future US is in negotiation with leading major and independent publishers and expects to be announcing partnerships shortly.
Guitar World’s innovative business model will create a fully legal profit center for music publishers and their writers. Valuable new financial streams for songwriters will be paid to publishers based on revenue derived from advertising or download charges, depending on how the users acquire the tabs.
Guitar World Tabs will be integrated into the popular Guitar World web site (http://www.guitarworld.com).
As the bible of guitarists worldwide, Guitar World has published song transcriptions every month for 26 years, making it one of the largest and arguably one of the best databases of its kind anywhere. For decades, aspiring rock guitarists have learned to play their favorite songs from these tabs featuring chords, lyrics, tempo and often solos and licks. The site will feature these Guitar World premium tabs, along with rights-cleared user-created tabs written in ascii format.
Visitors will have three choices on how to get their tabs:
Free: Users can access all user-generated tabs and a portion of the Guitar World premium tabs for free tabs, embedded in a customized media player in which they must view an advertisement first. Free tabs can not be copied, printed or downloaded.
Pay-Per-View: For a portion of the premium Guitar World tabs, users will be required to pay a nominal fee of $.59 to $.99 to view tabs on customized Flash player for a period of 30 days. A tab acquired per pay-per-view can not be copied, printed or downloaded.
Pay-Per-Download: Users can purchase individual premium Guitar World tabs for a price between $.99 and $2.49 each. Pay-per-download tabs can be copied, printed and shared. Guitar World will examine the feasibility of pay-per-download subscriptions to launch at a later date.
The Guitar World Tabs site will be rich in Web 2.0 community features and intends to be the leading social network for guitar players of all skill levels.
After the site launches, Guitar World will continue to analyze the site’s revenue results and customer experience, and perfect the best business model for publishers and their writers.
About Future
Future US is a leading publisher of cutting-edge special interest magazines (Official Xbox Magazine, PlayStation®: The Official Magazine, PC Gamer, Maximum PC, Mac|Life, Nintendo Power, Pregnancy, Future Snowboarding, Guitar World, and Revolver) and websites (GamesRadar, FileRadar, gloob.tv, ModShop, Next Generation, and MetalKult) which sell in excess of 2.1 million and reach more than 3.5 million unique visitors per month. Future’s publications reach a young, active, affluent audience and rank 12th among audited newsstand publishers in gross newsstand revenue. Future US is based in the San Francisco Bay Area, with offices in New York, Los Angeles and San Diego.
