Music Is Art And Should Not Be Taken Advantage Of

For a moment, let’s put ourselves in a hypothetical scenario. Let’s say that you are the biggest sensation in the music industry and you produce your most successful album to date. You think that it’s a beautiful piece of art.  After making your album available to world, imagine if a person decides to put it on a website for anybody to access it for free. This person did not get your permission to do this, and you don’t get any compensation for having your album on this website. Also because of this, people don’t buy your album and just go to the website. Wouldn’t it make you upset if someone took your work, and you didn’t get anything for all the work you put into the album? This scenario is actually similar to Taylor Swift’s controversial issue with music sharing websites such as Spotify. 

Recently, Taylor Swift took a daring move and decided to take her entire discography off of Spotify. This means that people no longer had access to her music for free. Sounds pretty selfish, don’t you think? It may seem that way, but she actually has a good reason for doing this. She argues that music is a type of art and should not be free. All types of artists might feel that it wouldn’t be fair for someone to take their work without paying for it.  

First, it’s a fact that music can count as a type of art form. It has similar elements to a painting or a piece of poetry. According to an article that defines music as an art, music includes “levels of feeling, emotion, and meaning” and also “has language involving sound and notation that is a capable of communicating numerous.” That being said, a finished album is comparable to a painting hanging in a museum. Both artists worked very hard to convey their feels and share a message. Naturally, they would want to receive credit and earn what they deserve for making said work. The purpose of emphasizing that music is art is to show that you can’t just treat music like it’s something you can take advantage of. Just one song might not be as valuable as a million dollar painting, but it’s still worth as much to the artist who made the song. 

So going back to Taylor, she feels that all people should pay for their music. If people just take the songs she wrote, it’s not very fair to her and all the people who helped her produce her albums. I’m sure many other music artists feel the same way. 

In conclusion, I support Taylor for making this statement. I always buy her albums because I like supporting her. Even though we have access to music sharing websites like Spotify, we should still support our favorite artists by buying their artworks that they make.