One of my guilty pleasures is my love of the music of ABBA.
I always felt that if you wanted to study perfect pop music then study the song catalogue of Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson. To say that I have the utmost respect for these two songwriters is an understatement.
Now while Benny has been the musical director of his own Orchestra of late, Bjorn has been recently elected to the role of president of CISAC which is the umbrella organisation of copyright collection societies around the world.
It is in his role as president of CISAC that Bjorn has been an outspoken advocate for the rights of songwriters.
He was even quoted in the May 7th, NY Times article “Will Songwriting Survive Streaming? Abba’s Bjorn Ulvaeus Is Worried” as saying that…
…the streaming economy that now dominates the music industry has put songwriters at a severe financial disadvantage. Low payouts, split among teams of writers, mean that even the composers of major hits make a relative pittance from streams despite the clear importance of songwriters and producers in crafting the material that propels the careers of star performers.
He extrapolates the above quote further in a very recent TEDx talk he gave called Rebalancing The Song Economy where he offers three ways in which the song economy can be made fairer for the creators of the currency that the music industry today is built on…
SONGS!
Here’s the video of Bjorn’s TEDx talk. Enjoy!
Well, what did you think of that? Even though Bjorn Ulvaeus made his fortune through writing songs for ABBA in the “good old days” he still has the humility and humanity to advocate fairness and equality for songwriters doing it tough in this new music industry TODAY.
Awesome! Makes me want to love ABBA all over again.
Peace,
Corey 🙂