Earlier today we answered some questions for an interview regarding MXTabs. After reading through the response, we thought it might be useful for us to share this information with all our users. It hasn’t been rewritten at all, so some of it might seem strangely written in the context of this blog post… but regardless it should give you all an idea of where we are coming from and where we are going with MXTabs.

The MXTabs site is really not going to change much under Musicnotes. The way we see it, the musician community designed exactly what it was they wanted when the site was first running in its unlicensed format (before it shut down and we acquired it). The users still create all the content for the site, and they can rate review and now moderate whether a tab even goes to the site in the first place.

Really the only difference is that we have to go through a licensing approval process before tabs can go to the site. If a publisher has opted not to license their content, then we respect their decision as the intellectual property holder and do not allow those tabs to go to the site. Of course we will be continually working on adding additional publishers, so once a publisher does sign on who has opted out in the past, then we will add any tabs licensed by them, as unlicensed tabs stay in a sort of perpetual authorization queue.

The only other change is that we’ve completely redesigned the site and are implementing much more of a social network / community functionality into the way the system works. Since tab sites are somewhat similar to sites like YouTube, where users share content they have created, we felt it was important to build in much more of a social aspect so they can more easily share this information with each other. We’re currently in the midst of designing the official launch version of the site, so what is up for the public to see right now is actually our alpha version. We’ve learned quite a bit from a combination of user, advertiser and internal feedback during the alpha phase of MXTabs, and we’re confident that the launch version of the site will be the best tab experience online.

While implementing the community features of MXTabs we did not, however, want to simply slap up “friends” and “comments” and other basic community type options that you expect on a social network. Instead we looked at the features that users have come to expect and really put a lot of thought into how they would best be implemented on a social network built around a specific kind of content and user base. So while we have many of the usual systems, they do operate in some slightly different ways than what you might have seen elsewhere.

One of the biggest differences with the MXTabs community view vs. the approach of many other tab web sites is the way in which tabs go to the site in the first place. On the old MXTabs, as is the case with most other currently existing sites, a tab is submitted and a kind of god-like moderator (or team of moderators) ultimately decides whether it should go to the site or not. On the new version, we have put this decision fully in the hands of the sites users with a system we call “limbo.” Once a tab has been approved through a licensing channel, it goes to our site in “limbo” which means that it is available, but not officially part of the MXTabs catalog. Users can view the tabs that are in limbo and vote as to whether they want to approve or deny the tab from being part of the official catalog. This way the community decides what is good enough for MXTabs.

Regarding the relaunch and its comparability to Napster’s relaunch, it’s somewhat similar but not completely. When Napster re-launched they took the platform that had worked in the past and then took a top-down approach as to what content was available for download, in what version, etc. For MXTabs we are not forcing “official” versions of tabs on users. Instead they continue to create the content that goes up on the site, and there is no limit as to who can sign on. If you write a song yourself and you want it on MXTabs, you can submit it and license and you’ll be able to take part in the advertising revenue share.

As far as our competitors go, we’re pretty alone in the market right now. Our biggest competitors obviously are the sites that are continuing to operate unlicensed, as they will continue to be able to have more music up than us while we continue to license. The difference is that we are legal, so we don’t need to worry about lawsuits – but beyond that we share all advertising revenue with the songwriters and copyright holders, whereas the unlicensed sites use other peoples’ intellectual property fully for their own gain and profit. In our opinion our solution is a win for the musician community, the songwriting community, and hopefully ourselves as well.

The only other direct competition we have is Guitar World’s tab site, but they are taking a somewhat different approach than we are. They have been focusing on offering a combination of official versions you can buy, along with user submitted content. Their catalog does seem to be quite a bit smaller than ours is currently though. We expect to have somewhere around 50,000 tabs available at launch, where I believe their catalog is much less. You would have to check with them on that to be certain though.

In related competition there is the new Guitar Instructor site from Hal Leonard, which is focusing on offering official tab downloads for a price. Their approach is again different from ours though in that we are focusing on allowing the users to create and share knowledge from a social aspect, whereas theirs is much more top-down oriented. Our sister company, Musicnotes.com also offers official tab downloads (and a very cool product called Guitar Guru), but we feel these are two different markets and while we intend to have some small interaction between the two, we do not want to try to force a change in the way a musician wants to access their tabs. Some want to buy official versions, others want to create and share their own in a free trading platform. We think both are great.