By Paulo Coelho
I am sure that Myspace, this fantastic open forum, has nothing to do with the fact that some songs are “deleted by the artist”. I am also sure that Frank Sinatra did not ask his beautiful song “Fly me to the moon” to be deleted from my profile, for the simple reason that right now he is really flying around this planet, the old blue eyes looking at us, his legacy still alive in his voice.
So who deleted my song? This is the second one to be deleted, the first was one of the Beatles songs. The answer is simple: greed and ignorance. Greed that does not understand that this world has changed. Ignorance that thinks that, if the music is available for free, people are not going to buy the CD.
A] some will say : you are rich enough to afford having your texts here for free. It is true that I am rich (so it was Frank Sinatra, and his heirs, and the record label who currently has the rights), but this is not the point. The point is that, like many of the people that I meet here in myspace, we want first and foremost to SHARE something. Go to most of the pages, and what will you see? Fantastic pictures, great blogs, amazing photos. For free. My texts are for free here. And you can reproduce them anywhere providing that you tell the name of the author.
B] others will say: you should use myspace new musicians in your profile. I could, of course. And I find a lot of fantastic songs there. But music is normally a legacy of a generation, and the generation in question should fight to keep alive the memories of the artists who were singing or performing while we were discovering the universe, the art of kissing, the first tears provoked by a broken heart. It is our duty with these people who gave us magical moments: try to tell to the next generation that they were there.
C] The industry will say: artists cannot survive without being paid. But the industry is thinking on the opposite direction of our reality today. I can give you an example. There is Aart Hilal in my top friends. Aart is from Vladivostok, Russia. She first read my book “The Alchemist” in my webpage. How? I found a Russian pirate version of the book in the internet. My first decision it was to post it in my webpage, because at that moment my books were having problems of distribution in Russia. Aart download the text, read it, decided to buy the book, and my subsequent titles. Up to today, I have over 10.000.000 hard copies sold in Russia, and I am convinced the this fist step (giving the book for free) was paramount to the subsequent success.
D] I also decided, one year ago, to put a link to “The Pirate Coelho”, an non-official fan page that allows people to download the full texts in different languages. I am selling more books now than one year ago. I myself cannot put my books for free (except in Portuguese) because there are copyrights for the translations, otherwise I have nothing against people first trying, then buying (because I am like this). To summarize: we are moving to a different world, where greed in art will be punished by oblivion.
E] The good side of it is that young people are far ahead of the system, and Peer2Peer is there ( I already wrote about it, and for the ones who are interested, please check the link at the end of this post). I am not advocating piracy here, but how did all these social communities start? At first it was just wanting to chat with another person. Then came the need to chat with several people at the same time. But chatting isn’t enough – we have to share the music, the book or the film that we love. When there was no law against it, this information was exchanged freely. Finally, when the entertainment industry caught on and the repression began, the young people on the Internet always managed to keep one step ahead, and so the thing continues.
G] Art is not an orange. If you buy an orange and eat it, you have to buy another one, and then it makes sense that oranges should not be given for free, because the consumer consumes the product. Art is about beauty. Music is about beauty. If I visit a page and I like the music, I am sure I will buy the CD, because I want to know more about the work of the artist.
H] A woman went to a market and saw two jars. She asked the price to the vendor: “ten coins”, he answered. The woman was surprised: “but one of these jars has been painted by an artist!” The vendor replied: ” I am selling jars. Beauty has no price.”
Love
Paulo
Below, the link to my column on Peer2Peer:
http://www.warriorofthelight.com/engl/edi134_amigo.shtml
Welcome to Share with Friends - Free Texts for a Free Internet
