iLife ‘09 is finally available on store shelves, and while most of the attention will probably go to iPhoto’s spiffy new face-recognition, there’s a feature tucked into GarageBand that might be making headlines very soon: premium lessons for piano and guitar, presented by the artists themselves. Dubbed ‘Lesson Store’, Apple’s online marketplace for music lessons has all the makings of a revolution in music learning that could prove to be incredibly popular and lucrative. We’ve known about it since its unveiling at Macworld, but only after trying it out can I confirm what many initially suspected: this thing is going to rock.

I’ve played guitar on-and-off for the last six years (I am mildly talented, at best) and have been exposed to a wide range of the learning tools available. The most popular by far are online ‘tabs’ - text based files that are easier to read than traditional music and are readily available. Unfortunately, the vast majority of tabs available on the web are laughably incorrect. Tab sites also have to deal with constant copyright infringement threats from record labels and publishers, who allege that the user-created tabs violate their IP. But the ‘tab books’ published with the consent of these labels are often just as inaccurate as the ones on the web (they’re rarely written by the original artist), and tend to be ridiculously overpriced.