I believe that "inherent value" is an oxymoron, because, if something has value to you, that means that you value it. Nothing just has objective, natural, and irrefutable value by itself, people find value in it, and what one person values, another person may not. Thusly, in my opinion, all value is subjective. That fact does not, however, make
things people find valuable any less valuable to those people. Just because value is personal does not mean it doesn't exist.
Music is like an extremely advanced form of communication. It's as if the artist takes a fragment of how they were feeling in a particular moment, or how they imagine someone else, or even a hypothetical person, was feeling, and puts it into the mind of another person: the listener, allowing them to perceive and experience a moment as the original person who felt that set of emotions did. In this sense, music is a means of communication that accomplishes a form of interpersonal empathy no other means has yet been able to, other than visual art. The fact that we still have it today, after all the ages, makes sense, because one of the largest reasons we evolved to where we are today as humans was by being a social species, i.e, communicating.
The ability to recognize and understand such a message in music has many of the same limits as other means of communication. One good example is the ability to comprehend a language; if you were trying to tell something, no matter how much meaning it had to you, to someone else, but you were saying it in Mandarin Chinese, and this person didn't speak Mandarin Chinese, it would seem like meaningless nothingness to them. The message would only be received by those with the wherewithal to do so, i.e. "speaking the language" of that music.
Whether or not all music should be paid for by its listeners is an entirely different question. When it comes to this matter, I support the decision, largely, being up to each individual artist. It is definitely hard to protect each individual song or track down each illegal download or streaming of music, which could make the following method complicated to execute, but I think that, if a specific artist is ok with his or her music being shared freely, then this decision should be respected, and if an artist wants the purchase of their music to be protected, then it should be protected, as such. There are many examples of artists from the sixties that had a very relaxed approach to the sharing of their music, and, in many cases, encouraged it, because what mattered to them was getting the meaning, message, and feeling of their music spread around, for all the world to hear, the way that works of art of the ancient masters are appreciated by everyone today, and not how much they profited from it.
It is, of course, true that this is not exactly the trend today, and although this may largely be attributed to the advent of the internet and subsequent ease of piracy, I still think it's fair to question what the grander implications of this are. Do modern musicians largely care more about how much money they're making for their next song than whether or not it reaches someone, means something to them, or helps them? This was absolutely not the case for the aforementioned artists from the sixties. Is this due to the advent of the internet, or is there a bigger issue going on here? There are actually a few examples of artists with more relaxed views about how their music is spread today. Although their motivations for this attitude vary from being a band still in the early stages of its development in desperate need of publicity to more philosophical thoughts, these bands do exist. One such band is System of a Down, or at the very least, they were one such band back in their third album. This is the cover of that album:
Music is like an extremely advanced form of communication. It's as if the artist takes a fragment of how they were feeling in a particular moment, or how they imagine someone else, or even a hypothetical person, was feeling, and puts it into the mind of another person: the listener, allowing them to perceive and experience a moment as the original person who felt that set of emotions did. In this sense, music is a means of communication that accomplishes a form of interpersonal empathy no other means has yet been able to, other than visual art. The fact that we still have it today, after all the ages, makes sense, because one of the largest reasons we evolved to where we are today as humans was by being a social species, i.e, communicating.
The ability to recognize and understand such a message in music has many of the same limits as other means of communication. One good example is the ability to comprehend a language; if you were trying to tell something, no matter how much meaning it had to you, to someone else, but you were saying it in Mandarin Chinese, and this person didn't speak Mandarin Chinese, it would seem like meaningless nothingness to them. The message would only be received by those with the wherewithal to do so, i.e. "speaking the language" of that music.
Whether or not all music should be paid for by its listeners is an entirely different question. When it comes to this matter, I support the decision, largely, being up to each individual artist. It is definitely hard to protect each individual song or track down each illegal download or streaming of music, which could make the following method complicated to execute, but I think that, if a specific artist is ok with his or her music being shared freely, then this decision should be respected, and if an artist wants the purchase of their music to be protected, then it should be protected, as such. There are many examples of artists from the sixties that had a very relaxed approach to the sharing of their music, and, in many cases, encouraged it, because what mattered to them was getting the meaning, message, and feeling of their music spread around, for all the world to hear, the way that works of art of the ancient masters are appreciated by everyone today, and not how much they profited from it.
It is, of course, true that this is not exactly the trend today, and although this may largely be attributed to the advent of the internet and subsequent ease of piracy, I still think it's fair to question what the grander implications of this are. Do modern musicians largely care more about how much money they're making for their next song than whether or not it reaches someone, means something to them, or helps them? This was absolutely not the case for the aforementioned artists from the sixties. Is this due to the advent of the internet, or is there a bigger issue going on here? There are actually a few examples of artists with more relaxed views about how their music is spread today. Although their motivations for this attitude vary from being a band still in the early stages of its development in desperate need of publicity to more philosophical thoughts, these bands do exist. One such band is System of a Down, or at the very least, they were one such band back in their third album. This is the cover of that album:
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