Ultimate Guitar Archive
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Ultimate Guitar Archive | |
|---|---|
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| URL | http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/ |
| Commercial? | Yes |
| Type of site | Tablature archive |
| Registration | Optional |
| Owner | Eugeny Naidenov |
| Created by | Eugeny Naidenov |
Ultimate Guitar Archive, also known as Ultimate-Guitar.com or simply UG, is a large guitarist community website known for its large amount of guitar and bass tablature, reviews of music and equipment, interviews with notable musicians, online written and video lessons, and forums. It was started on October 9th, 1998 by Eugeny Naidenov - a student of economic faculty of Kaliningrad State University, Russia[4].
UG is the largest music website on the Internet, at number 300 in the Alexa Global 500[1] with a traffic rank of 295[2]. It has a rank of 41 for members, and 128 for posts at Big-Boards.com[3].
Contents |
Community
UG is home to over 890,000 registered users.[4] It is a strong community of forum users who frequent the site. Community members may also create guitar lessons or other related articles, and have their approved works published on the website and read by its many users.
Like the tabs, the lessons and column are also rated by users, which attributes towards UG Points (or rather number of contributions), your UG score also increases, or decreases as the members rate your contribution.
The Pit
The Pit is the most popular and most active section of the Ultimate-Guitar.com forums. It is the part of the site where the registered UGers can discuss multiple topics, including those that do not necessarily have to do with guitar or even music. Many political, religious and topical issues are debated here.
The Pit is also infamous for its frequent cheeky incidents. Sometimes vicious arguments can take place between multiple users. Hot button issues usually gain much attention and become popular (or a nuisance depending on which side you are on). The Pit also shows a great deal of community with projects like the UG album, the demotivational pictures or the 'UG Naked Club'.
Occasionally, The Pit runs into menacing individuals from other websites (Usually they are members of the website 4chan) . These individuals may not be fond of The Pit and perform 'raids' on the forum. Raids are when these individuals post shock images in several different threads. The moderators usually get the situation under control in a matter of time.
Profiles
On August 12, 2007, the Ultimate Guitar site launched "UG Profiles". This added another feature to UG that other tablature sites do not feature. UG Profiles can be used for networking, advertising gear, bands, and users' own MP3 recordings, in a similar way to other sites such as Myspace; unlike other networking sites, UG Profiles are focused on those who share the interest of guitar, or to a lesser extent, bass. Users are able to add profiles for each of their bands, upload pictures of themselves, as well as gear, display their "guitar skills", join groups of interest, and upload MP3's of that specific user's work.
MPA Conflicts
In late 2004-2005, after many tab sites began closing due to legal threats from the Music Publishers Association of America, UG saw a surge of new users flock to the community. UG, which pays licensing fees to publishers, was unaffected by MPA legal actions. As stated in an article posted on the site, UG finds the MPA to be humorous (a satirical picture stating "When you download tabs from UG, you're downloading communism" was made in response to the MPA's warnings) and does not take their warning seriously, mainly because the site is based in Russia and is not affected by American laws. The site also pays royalties to show the tabs on their website.
Tablature
Tabs can be voted from 1 star (the worst) to 5 (the best) stars, and comments can be made about the tab. The highest rated tab is "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin with 327,334 votes and counting. [5]. Tabs of albums can also be submitted. Bands with large collections of tabs include:
Approximately 1500 tabs are added every few days.
There are many different types of tablature files that can be submitted to Ultimate-Guitar. Files such as basic guitar tabs and bass tabs can be read from an Internet browser in ASCII format. Guitar Pro and Power Tab files are run through programs that can play the tablature and often include multiple instrument tabs. These files can be saved and opened on the user's computer.
Media
In November 2007, a UG user was quoted on the Reuters UK website, rating the Gibson Robot Guitar[5].
