My thoughts on why Spotify is flawed

+PCMag states it best: "Good music that people enjoy has to be worth something."

That's the precise problem with Spotify—it is probably the only music product on the market today that offers an on-demand music library, free-of-charge.

Many have compared Spotify to other streaming services, such as +Pandora. The problem is, by definition, Pandora and Internet radio, designed specifically for discovery, and subscription services, like +Beats Music and +Google Play Music All Access, are based on completely different models. Internet radio provides limited ability to play the exact track on-demand and subscription services are obviously paid services. 

Spotify has created users who feel entitled to virtually owning and playing specific music at no charge. For example, I have seen comments, from Spotify users, asserting that Taylor Swift should have her music on Spotify because not everyone has the financial ability to purchase it or how costly it would be to pay for music. I'm not sure when we evolved into a society where content, and other peoples' works, that took valuable skills and insane amounts of time to create, were taken for granted. Or, as +The Telegraph puts it, "we now have an extremely entitled culture, where any kind of art is seen as a communal property." Certainly, not everyone can afford books, movies and even Android devices or iPhones, all various types of content and products that hard-working people create and turn into reality.

In an interview with Yahoo!, Taylor summed up how she felt when she tried releasing new music (Shake It Off) directly on Spotify: 

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 (Taylor Swift).  

Taylor Swift performing in Arizona during her RED World Tour.

I have always believed that the Internet should be free and open and that we should create better marketplaces and channels for content to be accessed and distributed at reasonable prices. This should be decided by the equilibrium of supply and demand. This is our best bet against piracy, not distributing content for free or keeping it in exclusive, far-to-reach corners of the web.

A lot of people, especially those that I have had a pleasure of discussing this issue with, believe Taylor is being greedy or selfish. I disagree. She is continually adding to the next generation of the music industry and trying to solve some of the biggest problems it has ever faced. She is standing up for superstars and indie-bands alike, because her position allows her to. It's why various smaller artists have tweeted her, praising her stance against Spotify, calling it "a streaming service that doesn't pay."

Payment in exchange for creative and valuable content is simply so that those same content creators creating all the things we enjoy can continue to innovate and bring us even more quality content. It's the same reason why big-name artists, including Adele, +Coldplay, +Beyoncé and others, have followed the approach of releasing Spotify versions months after their music actually comes out. Unfortunately, smaller artists don't have the ability because they first need their music just out there however and wherever it can be—it's time they should start making money too.

In fact, according to PCMag, 

Swift wanted to keep her latest album on delayed-release, or at least only available to Spotify's premium subscribers, which Spotify didn't want; hence the impasse.

I am not saying that streaming services aren't the answer. But, I do not think Spotify and its flawed model, in particular, are the answers we are looking for, both as consumers and content creators—we will get lower quality of content and content creators cannot make a living. The music industry is ripe for innovation, but Spotify does not have the solution.

At the end of the day, Taylor Swift ignited an important conversation about how much we value content and everyone should be happy about that.

Additional Articles

PCMag: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2471728,00.asp

"Taylor Swift vs. Spotify: Why Music Should Not Be Free"

+Yahoo!: https://music.yahoo.com/news/taylor-swift-shuns-grand-experiment-streaming-music-225600118-rolling-stone.html

"Taylor Swift Shuns 'Grand Experiment' of Streaming Music"

+The Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/11212861/Taylor-Swift-left-Spotify-because-we-stopped-valuing-art.html

"Taylor Swift left Spotify because we stopped valuing art"

Economics discounts the innate good in people

"The fact that you possess a sense of morality, and we do not, gives us an evolutionary advantage..."
-Man of Steel

Or does it?

Is there something bigger we want to reach for or is self-interest our basic resting pulse? 

-The Newsroom

After my Microeconomics class today, this article ("Does Studying Economics Breed Greed?"by Adam Grant) popped up on my +LinkedIn feed. The article cited studies that showed how Economics was creating students with less values and more greed. Very appropriate. And I completely agree. As interesting as Economics is, I was telling my mom earlier this school year why I think it is fundamentally flawed.

Economics virtually asserts self-interest is 100% responsible for explaining how humans act. And it promotes that sense -- that our world is better when we focus on self-interest and maximizing our own utility. It states that this allows society to be more efficient and have more of everything and more is better. In fact, throughout the years, I have been told that Economics can happen because of "greed," and that it actually makes us all better off.

Courtesy: http://blog.tifwe.org/c-s-lewis-greed-and-self-interest/

But I'd like to think that the world doesn't work that way. That there's innate good in each individual. That we can have maximized efficiency while also being moral.

I was also telling my mom the other day that society's focus on economics, the economy, pure dollar signs and percentages, instead of over morals and values, is the exact reason our world economy is where it is today. The reason that 2008, and everything afterwards, happened.

In sports, you can't win a game by merely focusing on "winning." Likewise, you can't fix the economy by only caring about the numbers. In both, it's about the underlying values, whether it's the fundamental skills and teamwork or the sense of instilling morality.

It isn't a greed-less world that we are striving for. Or even one where everyone receives the same resources. Instead, it is one where we can harness greed to truly make the world a better place. It's one where competition, cooperation, ethics, morals and openness are all promoted.

Because we don't want to end up like the people of Krypton.