NO STRINGS ATTACHED

Free and legal: When it has to do with music, that combo has been hard to come by in the digital age.

But there's good news for guitarists, especially for those who can't read music. Musicnotes Inc., an Internet-based sheet music store, and the Harry Fox Agency, which represents more than 30,000 U.S. music publishers, announced a licensing agreement Tuesday (March 27) authorizing a relaunched version of the guitar tablature site www.MXTabs.net, which will offer free, licensed legal tabs.

Users will be encouraged to participate in the site's community to help improve the song catalog, says Musicnotes, and that includes creating tab transcriptions for tunes not popular enough to be published in traditional songbooks.

Of course, the music publishers have to benefit financially in some way from this agreement, and they do. Participating publishers will get a percentage of all advertising income that's generated via views or downloads of tablature of their tunes on the site.

The new MXTabs.net site is expected to launch this summer.