The On-line Guitar Archive (OLGA) was the first Internet library of guitar and bass

tablature Tablature (or tabulature, or tab for short) is a form of musical notation indicating instrument fingering rather than musical pitches. Tablature is common for fretted stringed instruments such as the guitar, lute or vihuela, as well as many fr ...

, or "tabs". Born from a collection of guitarist internet-forum archives, it was a useful resource for musicians of all genres for over a decade.

History

The website began its life in the newsgroups ''rec.music.makers.guitar.tablature

and ''alt.guitar.tab

where users would post tabs they had written or requests for tabs of certain songs or artists. The problem was that after a few days, the contents of the forum would be ''aged'' (i.e. removed). Around 1992 the posts were collected together by

James Bender Changes to Canadian elections law in 2004 closed "Longley's Loophole". This court decision resulted in the loss of funding for the Parti Marijuana Party and other small parties. The Marijuana Party fielded twenty-three candidates in the 2006 feder ...

UNLV The University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) is a public land-grant research university in Paradise, Nevada. The campus is about east of the Las Vegas Strip. It was formerly part of the University of Nevada from 1957 to 1969. It includes th ...

into an

ftp The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data ...

site that later became www.OLGA.net. In 1994

Cathal Woods Cathal or Cahal is a common given name in Ireland, spelled the same in both the Irish and English languages. The name is derived from two Celtic elements: the first, ''cath'', means "battle"; the second element, ''val'', means "rule". There is n ...

took over the project as archivist. In 1996,

EMI Publishing EMI Music Publishing Ltd. is a British multinational music publishing company headquartered in London, owned by parent company Sony Corporation of America. In May 2018, Sony Music Publishing agreed to increase its stake in EMI to 90%, pending ...

filed a complaint with UNLV, claiming that the archive was in breach of

copyright law A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...

with songs they had the rights to. Although OLGA was never threatened directly, UNLV kicked the project off its server. Then in 1998, after a new home for the site was found, OLGA received a similar copyright complaint from the

Harry Fox Agency The Harry Fox Agency (HFA) is a provider of rights management and collector and distributor of mechanical license fees on behalf of music publishers in the United States. HFA has over 48,000 music publishing clients and issues the largest number ...

(HFA). As a result, OLGA was forced to shut down, re-emerging later as ''OLGA incorporated'', a registered non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the archive and providing for its bandwidth. The site prior to this final move was preserved as "the old archive," and contributions since the move were stored in "the new archive". In June 2006 they received a take down letter from lawyers representing the NMPA and the MPA

although by this time temporary clones of the archive had started to appear on sites such as Renegade Olga. On March 27, 2007, HFA announced a licensing agreement with Musicnotes which "authorize a newly launched Musicnotes guitar tab download website that utilizes the copyrighted music of HFA’s participating music publishers on a commission free basis." Though the announcement did not specifically mention where this site would be available, the contact information for the Musicnotes representative also mentioned MXTabs.net. Musicnotes is an internet-based sheet music retailer and publisher, offering over 400,000 pieces of digital sheet music and guitar tablature.

Contributions

To be a candidate for the archive, a file was required to be the author's own work (i.e., interpretation of how to play the song) and cannot have been derived from a published music book, otherwise inclusion in OLGA would have constituted a copyright violation.

Current status

In 2006, the Archive removed all 34,000 tablatures on the site. A note posted on the site indicated that those running the site had received "a 'take down' letter from lawyers representing the

National Music Publishers Association The National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) is a trade association for the American music publishing industry. Founded in 1917, NMPA represents American music publishers and their songwriting partners. The NMPA’s mandate is to protect and ...

and the Music Publishers Association", according to the linked letter on the front page. In the letter it is stated that OLGA "makes available tablature versions of copyrighted musical compositions owned or controlled by members of the NMPA and MPA" Although originally a notice on the site suggested that the shutdown would only be temporary while OLGA attempted to resolve legal issues, the long time archivist for the site has indicated that the situation is permanent. On a personal web site he stated, "For twelve years I ran OLGA - the On-Line Guitar Archive. RIP." As of October 2019, the site appears to have been taken offline.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Olga Musical notation Guitar websites American music websites

History

Contributions

Current status

See also

References