Losing a (large) Number of Songs From Guitar Tricks

Let's not forget that licensing based song removal also occurs continuously with music streaming services, albeit at a much lower percentage of total library size. Even within the context of millions of songs, it probably affects most subscribers. At least a half dozen of my all-time favorite songs have recently disappeared from my personal Pandora library collection.

I can confirm that it also happened on True Fire to a smaller degree, due to the much smaller catalog. I called up and was able to talk to someone (imagine that!), who told me they lost licensing to those songs. I don’t want to name them because my memory is not good,(maybe Hotel Cali and For What It’s Worth??) but they give the option of buying the DLs. At first I thought, no way, but the voice on the other end said, they’re yours forever. They’re about $5 each, give or take, and they have sales all the time so I thought, why not? I can also print/save tabs.  Now I own the DLs and don’t wonder if the songs will be there when I log on. 

TrueFire has on two occasions over the past 3 years offered members the opportunity to purchase access and lifetime download rights to their entire song library (currently ~425 songs) and every future song that they will ever publish - for $99. I've not yet taken advantage of those offers but it's tempting. In any case, as W3 stated, members can download entire song tutorials (including tabbed sheet music) for $5 or less. I've seen popular songs go for as little as $1.25.

I like the idea that I can download the songs and pdf files, but they take up a huge amount of storeage. Maggie May is almost a gig. But for sure, if it's a song I really want to keep, downloading it is the way to go.

I've been a TrueFire All Access member for about 5 years. I cannot say I've ever seen an opportunity to purchase/download all current and future songs. They have provided a couple of opportunities to purchase the whole library as of a point in time (and once that did include the songs that would be released through the end of that current month; the total number of song lessons was 65). I did take advantage of that at the time, but I assure you, new songs that have been added since then were not added to my Owned collection. But I did get permanent access to 65 songs for a very good price.

I should also clarify the nature of their Song Lesson library (it's a little complicated by the recent move of the JamPlay content over to the TrueFire platform). JamPlay had a library of 385 Song Lessons. At some point, they stopped adding song lessons, and this library was frozen in time. The quality of these song lessons was, in my opinion, a mixed bag. Some were good, others were downright inaccurate.

Along the way, TrueFire acquired JamPlay, but nothing really changed on either site, other than the occasional exchange of courses on the sites so that members of one site could access a few courses from the other site.

In December 2021, both sites began to add what I call the New Generation Song Lessons. This marked the first time that TrueFire offered note-for-note song lessons. And they are fantastic, making use of SoundSlice to provide synced tab to the video. They teach all the guitar parts and (with two exceptions, White Room and Have You Ever Loved a Woman) are note-for-note accurate. The same format was used for the Song Lessons being published on both TrueFire and JamPlay. Many of the Song Lessons were offered on both sites, but there were always a few on each side that had not migrated over to their sister site. Unfortunately, JamPlay never got the synced tab working on their site.

In July of this year, all of the lesson content from JamPlay, including Song Lessons, was moved over to the TrueFire site. At the time, TrueFire had 65 of the New Generation Song Lessons, and they added 23 from the JamPlay platform. They also brought over the 385 older, "mixed bag" Song Lessons. Since that merger, 4 more New Generation Song Lessons have been added, bringing the total to 92 currently.  By monitoring the social media accounts of their teachers and other means, I'm aware of about 10 more song lessons that are in the hopper which have not yet been published. TrueFire has greatly slowed down their release of new Song Lessons (it used to be one a week). They have also yet to go back and add SoundSlice synced tab to the 23 new generation Song Lessons they brought over from JamPlay.

To add to the complicated story, TrueFire also offers a variety of what it calls "Song Packs". One of these is a collection of 5 of the note-for-note, new generation Song Lessons for Country songs. The rest are not note-for-note song lessons, but instead teach either beginner, easy strum versions, fingerstyle versions, or chord melody versions.

Oh, and one more twist: they recently released note-for-note, new generation Song Lessons for five Van Halen songs. These are the same high quality as the other Song Lessons, but they are only available bundled together as a "course", rather than as individual songs. I think they just wanted to give these very popular song lessons a more special treatment.

Hey Doug

Not sure what you are saying. Are you saying you can't download "all songs" or just some? 

Bill

TrueFire has a couple of different plans: All Access, where you pay a monthly or yearly fee to stream almost all the content, but can't download it to keep, and their free plan, where you purchase and download individual lessons as desired.

You can purchase and download any of the 92 next generation Song Lessons if you want. They don't currently have a deal on buying all of them, so you'd have to buy them individually. You can also purchase and download any of the "Song Packs", and you can purchase and download the "Play Like Van Halen" course that has the 5 Van Halen songs. TrueFire runs constant sales on all its content, so the prices vary a lot. FWIW, I believe the last song bundle deal where you could buy/download them all for a good price was last December, so who knows, maybe they'll run a similar deal next month.

The other 385 older song lessons that were brought over from JamPlay are streaming only for All Access students, and cannot be purchased/downloaded.

Got it. I have used TF for about the same period you have and was also an annual subscriber at one point but felt I probably just needed the odd lesson here and there and buy them. 

But with this discussion on songs I did check them out and was quite pleased with what I saw and did actually purchase and download Maggie May. But the file size is huge, so I probably won't do that too many times. 

Hello Doug,

I haven't had a lot of experience with TrueFire's song library because the songs I ran into in the past were apparently all from the 385 old generation song tutorials, and most of them really sucked compared to the superb Van Halen song pack that I perused just lately. I'm telling you, Doug, TF absolutely did have a $99 sale on the entire library, past, present and future. The last one was approximately one year ago. Thinking that such an offer was too good to be true, I emailed TF support and they verified that all future songs were included in the deal. I may still have that particular email tucked away somewhere and will post it if I can find it.

As far as the rest of the content on TF goes, it definitely is downloadable to keep once you purchase a course as an All Access member. I have most of a 2 TB external hard drive filled with nothing but downloaded TF courses that I purchased during their frequent course fire sales, when many courses are priced at $5 or less.

Sascha

Hi Sascha,

Below is the deal that I bought on May 1, 2023. It gave me ownership/download ability for all 65 of the new generation Song Lessons that were in existence at that time. Since then, they brought over 23 more new generation song lessons from JamPlay, and have added 4 more after that as well. None of those 27 are marked as Owned in my collection. 

The only other song lesson bundle offer I recall is the one shown below it. It was offered in December 2022 for $99. You could get all their existing song lessons, plus those that were on "pre-order" (i.e., announced but not yet released) at that time, as well as any others that would be launched as of 12/31/22. It didn't imply you got every song lesson they would every release for the rest of eternity. You may well have had TF support person tell you that, and if so, it would have been an incredible deal, but the ad below doesn't really imply that.

Doug,

Yes, the second graphic looks like the deal that I was thinking of and it's the right time frame. If so, then I was mistaken about the "forever future songs" element of that deal. Thanks for looking into this and setting me straight - I very much appreciate that. Now, I no longer have to fret about having missed an incredible deal, since it existed only in my own demented brain.🤯

Sascha

Well, you were making me nervous! I thought I'd missed out on something amazing! Still, the deal I got, which was only $55 for what was even more songs was really good. I wasn't going to bother since I always have All Access, but as insurance against possible licensing issues causing them to get unpublished, I thought it was worthwhile.

Doug, I agree. You did get yourself a good deal. I think everyone could use some insurance against losing access to favorite/classic song tutorials.

Y’all are smarter than I am and I appreciate both Doug and Sasha’s expertise. I’ve been a casual member of TF for many years, on and off, and up until GT lost all those songs, the validity didn’t hit me until TF lost a few. Of course there could’ve been more but it hit me when I went looking for one and it was gone. I called customer service (yes and you can talk to live knowledgeable English speaking rep) he told me, yes they lost rights to those songs. He suggested I purchase the DLs and I thought, yeah, this is real and I’ve got a chance, as this was the sale that ended 12/31/22. I actually had purchased a few songs prior and they subtracted money from my price!

 TF is forever having sales and it seems with every “holiday” they have something good going on. I truly believe TF is heads above GT in every category of guitar playing albeit their library isn’t as extensive, but the incredible lessons with the likes of  Bonamassa, Vai, and Malsteen(sp), they have pulled away from the internet pack. Remember, these lessons are taught by these players; not “in the style of…” and to hear these icons discuss their styles, thinking and the candor is priceless, let alone watching them play their own amazing body of work! It has occurred to me that my time and money with GT may be long in the tooth and if I focus on TFs subject matter, I might be more focused. There is nothing for me at GT except for there existing song library and so far, not a lot of new activity is rolling around in the up and coming. Time will tell and my subscription may not get renewed here. Just my two cents worth. 

Well, I for one, will miss your input here W3. And I definitely get where you're coming from. You can only review the Guitar Fundamentals tutorials on GT so many times before you internalize it all. Other than the song library, that just leaves the channels where we get a grab bag of random lessons trickling in.

TrueFire, on the other hand, is just mammoth. It has more content than any guitar student could ever tackle in one lifetime, regardless of musical tastes. And now with their apparent commitment to putting out only quality song tutorials that members can selectively purchase for download, it's really a no-brainer.

I'll likely stay for the foreseeable future since the song library is still chock-full of quality tutorials (and growing), I am not picky about what I learn so long as it's challenging, and it still takes me forever to truly master any song with a difficulty of 4/5 (which entails 260 songs).  Of course, I'll also maintain my all access membership at TrueFire.

Sascha

Credit where credit is due: I was glad to see that last week GT did publish a legit classic rock song lesson for Eric Clapton's version of Cocaine. Of course, they did also drop yet another obscure Stones song 😂, but then they did also do a lesson for House of the Rising Son the week before. So I'm glad to see these glimmers of hope of more popular, classic songs being taught. Fingers crossed that this is a trend.

That big loss of songs was effective 31 March.  The warning notification was posted by Ben Martin on 6 March and included a link to the list songs that were going away.

EDIT:  this post was in reply to #79 above which is now gone due to an edited insertion of spam

I was looking for some Kiss songs that I learnt here and can't find them anymore! What happened ? Where can I check the list of songs that arent available anymore ? I've been a member for a long time and if songs dissapears like that, I may save a buck or two and cancel and go youtube!

This is old old old news man. Guess you don't use the catalog much. 

300 or so songs were removed, but like I said, that was a long time back.

Agree!! I miss all the classic rock tunes you guys had. I really like how Anders breaks the songs down !!