>companies spent a long time telling us downloading single songs via Napster was the worst thing ever, before torrenting every book in existence themselves
really not the same entities here
really not the same entities here
https://www.napster.com/blog/napster-heads-to-microsoft-buil...
Free means the same as worthless, which inherently isn't true - since information takes time to consume in some form, and your time isn't worthless. Therefore even if you could listen to all songs theoretically for free, you would need to spend an inordinate time doing that.
When I was a kid, getting a CD from your favourite band was a major expense, getting a video game even more so. But it formed a sort of emotional attachment (and not even just for me), my friends talked about how 'band X''s new album was amazing or a stinker. Since there were multiple bands making similar kinds of music, choosing to be a fan of one but not the other carried real monetary weight.
Nowadays you just fish out a song you think you would like out of the endless sea of Spotify, no different from prompting an LLM. No, Spotify didn't make me enjoy music more.
Same applies for Steam & videogames.
Therefore I think the ritualistic act of paying money to get access to something does have a purpose. It inherently establishes the value of information to you, makes it an investment that you need to recoup by using it. I'm sure most musicians would trade a million fans who might check them out if they're in town, to ones who think their music changed their perspective in life.
Also the process of creating a song that vaguely appeals to millions is different from making one that speaks to a thousand.
This is a fundamental issue of modern capitalistic society, similar to the Marxist idea of 'alienation' - once something is cheap to get, you don't appreciate the effort that went into making it. And if your customers don't care about the thing they get, producers won't make an effor to make it good either.
And once nobody cares, people even forget what a quality product is like.
Without that, everything gets atomised into lonely individualism. You sit there with your headphones on listening to [Interesting band]. Not only do you not really care because you don't feel personally connected to the music - it's one of literally more than a hundred million content items on Spotify - but you're not sharing the experience.
This seems like the loss of a valuable thing which capitalist economics can't put a price on because it has no concept of value-created-by-shared-experience.
Superficially it's the same as 'sell-content-consumption-item-to-the-mass-market' but it's fundamentally not the same kind of thing.
The value is relationally both fleeting and persistent in ways that content consumption experiences - including live and recorded media of all kinds - aren't.
Maybe change your perspective? Treat Spotify like a valuable audio lexicon. You read about an artist, a song, a time and immediately you can hear what is it about. Incredible!
If Spotify is only treated as a lazy background feelgood provider (while reading Marx;)), no wonder you feel that way. But it's your power/choice to appreciate it (or not), regardless of money.
The same can be said for time. You said yourself it was an investment. There's no need for money to be involved since how much time you spend on a thing will establish the value of that information to you. If you must have a ritualistic act to form a connection to music, let it be the act of listening instead of paying.
Music discovery also takes in investment in time. Having near instant access to so much music also makes discovering a new song or artist you love very rewarding. I can easily listen to hundreds of songs before even one makes it into rotation in my current playlist.