Abatab: The home of officially-licensed indie sheet music and guitar tabs

(Ukelele transcriptions also available)

http://abatab.com

A long time ago I was asked by a fan for tabs to my song New York, New York. The only problem was, I had no idea what the heck I was playing. This week a new beta site launched for a company catering specifically to indie music. And with that, I will never again have to admit to my fans that I can’t tell them how to play my songs.

Abatab is the brain child of acclaimed New York singer/songwriter Jeff Jacobson. Jeff has had years of experience transcribing music for large publishing companies, creating note-for-note guitar sheet music for the likes of John Mayer, Dave Matthews, Metallica, etc. before he decided to launch Abatab.

His goals are to provide indie music fans with affordable and accurate sheet music, provide a new revenue stream for indie artists, and promote emerging artists via free sheet music.  Oftentimes big publishers don’t have the bandwidth to deal with indie artists, and Jeff noticed there was no reliable source of indie sheet music available. The songs are all licensed and the artists receive a healthy portion of the sales proceeds, agreeing to sell their sheet music exclusively through Abatab.

History

After coming up with the idea to create sheet music for indie artists, he didn’t see it as a viable business model because there were not enough artists able to afford the transcriptions. Last year Jeff revisited the idea from a different angle using a profit sharing business model.

The first artist was Allie Moss. After creating his business plan Jeff added Bess Rogers, Ari Hest, William Fitzsimmons and The Bowmans to his roster, establishing a solid foundation to launch with. The Abatab beta site was designed by Casey Shea, created and developed by Brooklyn’s own Sarah Chamberlin of AbacusDesign.net.

After producing an artist-friendly site, Jeff next sought to make it fan-friendly by offering free sheet music (no purchase necessary) and including an actual mp3 along with the download. Through his connection to the local music community he found several other artists to approach including Lara Ewen, Bryan Dunn, Kelli Rae Powell, and Jessi Robertson.  This also was in alignment with Jeff’s goal of promoting emerging indie artists alongside more established national acts. Giving fans of indie music free mp3s allows them to discover new artists they might never had heard of. That’s one of the reasons all the songs on the site have a music player with a song clip – so people can find the songs their looking for, but also discover new ones – and new artists, too.

Social Media

Part of Abatab’s approach is not only to promote the store, but also the artists themselves. Jeff follows all the artists online and will be using Twitter, FaceBook and the site’s blog to promote their news/tours/recordings and whatever they’re up to. The promotion of the site is also driven by the artists themselves via their mailing lists, websites, and social networking. And all the artists benefits from this promotion, as it draws people to the site where they can discover other artists they may not have heard yet.

While Jeff is not soliciting for new artists at the moment, he encourages artists to follow him on Twitter (http://twitter.com/AbatabIndieTabs) and Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Abatab-Indie-Tabs/140026609345986?ref=ts&v=wall) or join the mailing list for updates on possible future solicitations. Indie music fans are also encouraged to follow to find out when new artists and songs are added to the site.