Free Art?
In a recent interview with Yahoo Music, Taylor Swift makes this comment: ... music is changing so quickly, and the landscape of the music industry itself is changing so quickly, that everything new, like Spotify, all feels to me a bit like a grand experiment. And I'm not willing to contribute my life's work to an experiment that I don't feel fairly compensates the writers, producers, artists, and creators of this music. And I just don't agree with perpetuating the perception that music has no value and should be free. I wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal this summer that basically portrayed my views on this. I try to stay really open-minded about things, because I do think it's important to be a part of progress. But I think it's really still up for debate whether this is actual progress, or whether this is taking the word music out of the music industry. Also, a lot of people were suggesting to me that I try putting new music on Spotify with Shake It Off, and so I was open-minded about it. I thought, I will try this; I'll see how it feels. It didn't feel right to me. I felt like I was saying to my fans, If you create music someday, if you create a painting someday, someone can just walk into a museum, take it off the wall, rip off a corner off it, and it's theirs now and they don't have to pay for it. I didn't like the perception that it was putting forth. And so I decided to change the way I was doing things. I have tried to understand how the changes in the music industry for sometime. A lot of people say that musicians are now making their money on concerts, not on record sells. There's probably some truth to that. But I also think she makes a good point. What do you think? Same could be said of software. Do we live in a time with everything is expected to be free?