Taylor Swift probably can't convince millennials to pay for music

Taylor Swift is a huge star. She's also a vocal advocate — the de facto spokeswoman, in fact — for people paying for the music they consume. And not just individual songs, but entire albums. When accepting her Dick Clark Award for Excellence at the American Music Awards in late November, the 25-year-old singer-songwriter thanked "the fans who went out and bought over a million copies of my last three albums." She continued:

Swift elaborated when accepting her award as Billboard's Woman of the Year (for the second time) on Dec. 12:

Swift isn't just talking to fans and music industry insiders, either. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed in July, she noted that "piracy, file sharing, and streaming have shrunk the numbers of paid album sales drastically." She asserted that recorded music is valuable art and "valuable things should be paid for." And she gave her solution: connect with fans and sell them albums "that hit them like an arrow through the heart or have made them feel strong or allowed them to feel like they really aren't alone in feeling so alone."

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She's clearly right about this: Music shouldn't be free. You know it shouldn't. It costs money to record and mix and master songs for public commercial consumption. Some people make their living writing music, others performing it, and others still producing and promoting it. I'm not here to lecture — or throw stones from my glass house — but if you like music, you should pay for music, one way or another.

Swift doesn't dwell on why people started to treat music like free goods, and never mentions the "N" word — Napster. Luckily, Retro Reports has an excellent 12-minute mini-documentary on just that subject, and it's worth watching to understand how we got to this point:

This is the problem for the music industry: People can listen to just about whatever songs they want to online for free. With a little know-how, they can capture that music to play it wherever and whenever they want. The music industry is dangerously close to operating on the honor system, and it's very tempting to abuse that system rather than plunking down $10 for an album or $1.30 for a song on iTunes. This must keep record executives up at night.

The music industry isn't alone, by any stretch. All content creators — definitely including the news media — are struggling with monetizing products people don't have to directly purchase. The music industry was the first to grapple with this daunting paradigm shift, though, and its successes and failures constitute useful lessons for all content providers. Suing fans: Bad idea. Shaming fans: Ineffective. Giving them what they want: Not very lucrative.

I don't have an answer, but neither does Taylor Swift. She is obviously doing something right — her latest album, 1989, sold 2.7 million copies in its first six weeks, and she was reportedly worth about $200 million even before the album sold a single copy. Good for her. But "Be Taylor Swift" isn't a viable business model for the music industry.

Advertising-based and subscription music-streaming seems to be the trend right now — though not for Swift. (When she pulled her catalog from Spotify in November, Swift tells The Hollywood Reporter for its January print issue, "I didn't think that it would be shocking to anyone," or that she'd get "so many text messages, emails, and phone calls from other artists, writers and producers saying thank you.") Apple's iTunes store and its fellow online marketplaces are another tried-and-true way to sell music.

Both of those business models are friendlier to music lovers than the old way of buying physical CDs, tapes, and records, and both occupy a sweet, guilt-free middle ground between Tower Records and Napster. But neither is as profitable for the music business, generally. Also, neither will probably look the same in 10 years, if they're still around at all.

That's not necessarily your problem. People made music long before the modern music industry was around, and they will continue to make music even if it isn't profitable. It is easier and cheaper to make, record, and distribute music than at any time in history. The music businesspeople — record labels, artists rights organizations, music publishers — may have to tighten their belts even further. But you don't have to cry for them.

Once a song is recorded and released, it is in some ways a gift to the world — in fact, according to current copyright laws, songwriters can't stop people from performing their work, if they're willing to pay a royalty. But it's a gift you should pay for. That may be a hard message to hear from an artist worth $200 million, but nobody is forcing you to listen to Taylor Swift.