“Thank you for the music, for giving it to me.” (Andersson-Ulvaeus, 1977) Is this the song of the grateful downloader? Are the lyrics about his gratitude for the music he’s just downloaded and that he feels has been given to him? Does he perhaps send the kind, unselfish songwriter driving a taxi through the night to make ends meet an appreciative thought? Surely these warm thoughts can travel through the night; the gratitude of the downloader: the composer’s reward!

Joking aside, the joy of creation must never be denied, and it is truly a wonderful thing to know that something one has written is listened to by many people; waking emotions, causing goose bumps, and drawing that irresistible urge to listen again. Maybe a song you wrote could help a poor, depressed person out there to forget his misery for a while.

All this is, of course, reward in itself, but a prerequisite for the existence of these songs is almost always that their author can afford to devote himself entirely to cultivating his talent.

I am writing this to try to shed light on this problem from a different angle: from the inside. I am well aware that I, in many ways, am a bad choice for spokesman for the “poor songwriters”, the vast majority who have not yet made enough money to be financially secure.

Nevertheless, it makes me angry when those who want to get round copyright on the internet evoke a faceless and immensely powerful “intellectual property industry” as their main enemy just because it suits them.

Those under attack are people of flesh and blood, who are passionate about their profession. When I speak with younger colleagues about their current situation, I feel a strong sense of compassion for them and understand their anxiety about the future. Some of them feel that their work is being degraded. Patronising crusaders for the right to fileshare say: “Why don’t they go on tour and sing for their supper?” This argument shows a staggering ignorance of the fact that the people who write the songs are, more often than not, not performers. They are producers and songwriters, full stop.

An important part of the creative process is clearing away the rubbish. To know when something is really good, one must be able to identify and throw out that which is mediocre or bad. This is a time- consuming business. If one lacks this time, or cannot afford to take it, the quality of the work suffers. One can get lucky, but in the long term the quality level is going to be lower. I remember well the time Benny Andersson and I found we were no longer forced to tour and play to often uninterested audiences to pay the rent, and the feeling of pride that came from being able to call oneself a composer/lyricist, to support oneself in this field and to develop one’s skills and possible talent.

To get a generation accustomed to free downloads to respect copyright as much as the ownership of physical things is hard but it must be done.

A few of years ago, I discovered that the music my youngest daughter listened to was downloaded free from Napster and that she had no idea that what she was doing was wrong. It was easy to explain it to her, however, and now she pays for her music downloads. It needs to be easy and trouble-free, and it is now.

It must be possible to design a modern copyright environment that works with the internet without demanding surveillance that eats away at integrity. The UK Government is trying to address the problem and deserves support for having the courage to do so. We have to find a way of funding our future and not pretend that new revenue models are magically going to rescue us as the world of recorded music is destroyed by piracy.

I love applications such as Spotify — the best new service coming out of Sweden right now — but let’s not be fooled into thinking that these alone are going to be the answer to our future. Internet service providers and technology companies can, and should, take steps to deal with piracy.

It is not for me to suggest exactly how that will come about; I can only bear witness from the songwriters of the world. The songs you love may have been created in an instant, but much more often they are the result of hard work, honing of talent and hours of banging away on guitars and keyboards. And seriously . . .

“Who can live without it . . .”

These words were written for a mini-musical, The Girl with the Golden Hair. The character singing is jubilant and joyous at having been given a certain talent: people stop and listen when she sings.

On a higher, more poetic, level, these words can be said to share the feeling of gratitude that music exists at all. And yet I find myself asking, how are the songwriters and artists of the future going to support their creativity in the era of free?

Björn Ulvaeus has co-written ten UK No 1 hits. The hits album Abba Gold has sold 28 million copies worldwide

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