Wow GT just added another Rolling Stones song.

Many of these RS tunes made the top twenty.  Perhaps they are 'obscure' because of the tunes' age. 

None the less, I think it would be hard to find a band, past or present, that has such a large catalog... hard driving rock, ballads, blues, psychedelic and probably other styles/genres I haven't thought of.  That in itself may justify an 'overweight' of RS song lessons.

Is the long run of RS song lessons eyebrow raising?  You bet.  But aside from what drives the business decisions of a private company, the publishing of such a long string of RS lessons should hardly be considered a negative.  Could other groups' songs be published?  You bet, assuming the bands/publishing houses permit such at an affordable price.  For at least a couple years that I know of, either musicians have repurchased the rights to their own music or, conversely, sold out their total catalogs to publishers.  How that affects GT gaining rights to produce lessons is an unknown.  It is a private company.

I imagine the stretch of RS songs will end... even their catalog is finite.  But the complaints/dissatisfaction (dis-Satisfaction... get it? 😉) will continue.  It wasn't long ago posts bemoaned the infrequency of song lessons.  Now, the complaints boil down to too many/too frequent lessons "I" don't like. 

Me?  There can never be enough lessons for songs from the first decade of R&R/Top 40, although I'd be content with the second decade as well.  That leaves the last five decades for the rest of youse guys to fight over.  Unless you wanna talk about Country/C&W, folk, a half-dozen Hispanic genres, R&B/soul/rap and hip hop and on and on and on.

It’s obvious there are issues going on with Guitar Tricks. Period. If customers are dissatisfied, perhaps their concerns should actually be addressed. 

I'd agree with you saying, "The publishing of such a long string of RS lessons should hardly be considered a negative." if they were given to us sporadically.  That's not the case though, they're shoving the Rolling Stones down our throat.  Thats great for all the hard-core RS fans but what about the rest of us?  Since GT doesn't have the guts to actually explain to its customers what the situation actually I is don't blame anyone for complaining.  It's not like we're getting our subscriptions for free, we're paying customers who feel like we're getting shafted.  I myself have invested 15 years' worth of money to this site so I feel like GT could do much better.  How about a little transparency? Answer up GT I know your reading these posts because you pick and choose who you answer but never give a real explanation.

I disagree on the transparency thing. 

If I had a business that competed with other similar businesses and had to deal with suppliers that were becoming tighter with what they provide while also being courted by my competitors, I'd be loath to talk about the what I can do/can't do, the what I'll pay/won't pay, and what my plans to address all of it on the web.  

We were told GT couldn't renew the licenses, yet many aren't satisfied with that explanation.  While I understand the disappointment (lost some of my favs too) I don't understand the refusal to accept GT's answer and the demand more details.  I'm not sure customers of other businesses demand those businesses share their plans and competition strategies.  On the web, no less.  I guess my point is that customers of a private business should have no expectation of transparency from that business.

There is another issue that concerns me.  There might be other sites, but I know of none that pay royalties to the artists/licensing fees to the publishers.  To put it another way. GT is not ripping off the creators and providers of the music as other sites presumably do.  That makes GT's business more difficult and more expensive than its competitors.  And a business model to be respected for how they treat the musicians' music we care for.

YMMV.

My question started simple. Keen to hear from anyone who actually requested latest few. I'm thinking the request option is a myth. When I joined I was told song requests matter and influence what lessons they put together for us. Looking more and more like got the case. Don't get me wrong...the stones are the greatest and it does feel weird to question such good lessons. Just fishy and frustrating. Maybe the requests did come flooding in for these but yet to hear from any/many that would make us say....oohhhhh we were wrong....the requests are being addressed first.

Not the case sorry

Yep. No one is going to believe there is a rush on obscure RS songs, whether they cracked the top 100 in Albania or not. I’ve been reading the AI sounding reply(over passed few months) from GT that says new and big things are coming up. Still waiting but am definitely feeling played. I definitely respect and honor the incredible instructors/musicians that work up these amazing videos but the management is going to “mess up a good thing” (to quote Greg Allman). I’ve been in business for over 40 years and customers, although appreciative of our good work, want to know what have you done for me today? If I suddenly jerked a huge hunk of our service from underneath the customer, all heck would break loose if I wasn’t shoring up the hole. GT just stop with the placating replies and produce what you advertised in your reply. I don’t think anyone is looking for shock and awe but subscriptions are on the line and that’s your business. Keep rockin   

If the search by username function worked, we could go back and look at several posts from me over the years about song requests.  Basically, they all said that I know of no song requests that turned into to song lessons.

Once there was a Song Request sub-forum.  It was huge with dozens (hundreds?) of requests and related discussion.  I had a few posts there myself.  It appears, however, that when members recognized that requests weren't acted upon the sub-forum was discontinued and requests became a private communication between the requester and GT not visible to the rest of the members.  Meaningful to me, the posts in that Song Request sub-forum were lost/made unavailable, even to those that wrote them.

Now, of course, we can't know if any song requests are being turned into lessons.  But past history is an indicator, IMO.

"Frustrating" is an excellent word choice, Tinpan.  It applies to the Forum's loss of features/capabilities as well.

Interesting as always to read through the comments. I’ll toss out a few as well.

Regarding requests, I can confirm at least one song I requested turned into a lesson (Spooky by the Atlanta Rhythm Section). Was my request a coincidence? No idea, but they did create at least one lesson from one of my requests (and that song lesson is getting an expanded version to include an extra solo that was omitted in the first version).

Of course, their ability to honor requests is also dependent on the ability to license the song for use. Based on my research, it seems that the song lessons we lost were owned all or in part by Universal Music Group. That’s a really big publisher, and if Guitar Tricks can’t get rights for any of the songs in their catalog, then that definitely limits what’s available.

Lots of people demand to know more about why GT was unable to renew licenses for these songs. I think it’s simply a matter of people wanting to know with whom to be angry. If the publisher wouldn’t license the songs at any price, then people can be angry at the publisher. If GT decided they didn’t want to pay the price, then people can be angry at GT. Unfortunately, I don’t think knowing that is going to bring those lessons back.

I can say for sure, though, that the other big guitar song lesson sites also pay licensing fees for the song lessons they publish (GuitarInstructor.com, TrueFire.com[now merged with JamPlay], LickLibrary.com, SixStringCountry.com, Gibson app, etc). I’ve even seen these sites have to unpublish song lessons due to the dreaded licensing issues, too. I will say, though, that I do see lessons for songs owned by UMG being published on some of the other sites, so somehow someone is getting rights to those songs. 

As for the flood of Rolling Stones songs, yes, it’s getting a little old. I think GT knows that lessons in the classic rock genre are very popular, and the Stones are a big part of that, and between them and Nirvana, I guess that’s what’s available right now, so that’s filling the hole. Before that, we were getting a lot of 60’s R&B tunes. I’m hoping things open up soon and we can get a bigger variety.

Good write up and good to know... I stand corrected.  And admit to not visiting, or not in a very long while, any of the sites you mentioned.  My thoughts more were about the legion of YouTube sites that put up song lessons.  We could hope that I'm wrong about those, as well.

Nice to know about Spooky too.  That's one of those second decade songs of R&R/Top 40 I was talking about in my yesterday's post above.  😀   GT published the lesson in August of last year and it was followed up the next month with another Atlanta Rhythm Section tune.  How did that August date match up with your request?

They used to have a upcoming song list that would show what songs were coming in the next few months. I'm sure I'm not alone in saying they need to bring it back.

A simple solution for my money would be if GT simply listed/shared which songs/artists are available to them to create lessons on and then actually let us vote on them with some level of transparency. Pretty simple really. Happy days and would give us all a feeling of influence for our subs at least. Unfortunately John's post seems to confirm my suspicions though.

Good one!

Maybe GT should try a new marketing technique to get new customers.  Something like this "Join now and lose up to 300 songs with your first subscription!"  Think anyone would join?  Seriously though, there should be a disclaimer for new members letting them know that if you join they won't guarantee the songs you see today will be there tomorrow.  Why even join a site that doesn't let you know up front that it could happen?  Personally, I would have stayed a member for life if we'd never lost the songs, and it wasn't the first time it happened either.  GT is just too unpredictable now.

Given dougguitar's observation above, GT is not the only site to lose previously published songs.

I understand the feeling.  Many of the most contemporary songs leave me cold.  It's probably an age thing.  😉

It's Forum etiquette to include proper attribution when quoting another post/writing.  See #7 above.

Exactly, Bob and after the first big dump a few years ago, they replaced it with early blues base artist.   Nothing wrong with learning from the greats who paved the way, it’s just these were real basic songs without any lead and some without any single string melody.  It would have been fine if they let these awesome GT instructors show us what could be done with these songs and taught some lead and theory along with it for the more intermediate student, thus killing two birds with one stone.  I just think they missed the boat on that one.  It’s the same thing now with these rudimentary Stones songs, it appears to be coming only from the first publisher ABKCO (63-71), when the Stones were obsessed with the early American blues guys.  My frustration with all of this is they seemed like they completely abandoned the members that have been with them for so long.  I personally have learned a lot through their awesome tutorials, but now it seems they are just focusing on the newcomers and high turnover students.  Very little has come out in the last few years.   It was their catalog that kept me here and I will miss the instructors, but it has become pointless, with their catalog being totally decimated and nothing new to replace it.

While other sites (who also pay their licenses, despite numerous claims that “Guitar Tricks is the only guitar instructions site that isn’t ripping off artists”) might have had to unpublish songs, I have yet to see massive unpublishing at this level from any other company. What really bothers me is the fact that they advertised these songs being available and people bought annual subscriptions based on a song library that got gutted a few months into their subscription. People who renewed an annual subscription or bought one didn’t know these songs were leaving when they paid their fee. Then when asked, we got copy and paste responses that do not answer the questions the customers are asking. That is messed up and I just don’t understand the constant defense of these actions by some members. This company didn’t respect its customers enough to be transparent. That is a problem. If it doesn’t bother you to be ripped off, fine….but that doesn’t have to be good enough for the rest of us.