I may be a day or two late on this post, but I had to throw in my two cents. There’s been a lot of buzz recently about Apple v. Taylor Swift. If you haven’t heard, Apple Music, Apple’s new music streaming service, is offering a three month free subscription to its users. The catch, unfortunately, was that no artist would receive compensation for the plays their music got during those first three months. Obviously, it’s frustrating to create work (however successful) and not be compensated fairly—a struggle artists of many genres, both visual and performance, can relate to. Clearly, Taylor Swift felt the same way, as she explicitly laid out in a recent blog post detailing her reasons for pulling her music from the program.

This post received a lot of attention, as well as support from other artists who felt the same. Ultimately, Taylor’s post led to Apple’s reconsideration of the original deal. Apple is now planning to pay its artists for those first three months, while remaining free for subscribers. This initially feels like a win for the music industry and artists as a whole; however, there are always two sides to a story.

Some people feel that Taylor Swift is being unfair for withholding her music and is acting like an entitled multi-billionaire who just wants more money, even though she’s clearly rich enough to support herself already. They’re arguing that although she says she’s using her platform to stand up for smaller artists whose voices aren’t as well-known yet, her motives are not entirely selfless. Now clearly, Taylor would benefit from the change–although as someone of her magnitude, the money she’d make off three months’ worth of streaming through Apple Music likely wouldn’t impact her daily life the way it would that of an artist whose main income is through streaming sites. So no, her motives probably aren’t entirely selfless, but is that really the important issue? Hundreds of smaller artists were arguing for compensation in the same way to no avail, but Taylor Swift holds enough leverage in the industry to change Apple’s minds and get the artists paid for a quarter of a year they wouldn’t have been otherwise.

While discussing streaming sites, there’s a lot of talk about the benefits of accessibility and exposure for artists. People tend to be more inclined to buy music to support an artist they like and know, because they know they will enjoy their purchase. Providing music to streaming sites benefits artists because of the exposure they receive through suggestions and the accessibility to consumers allows them to try it out before deciding to purchase it. While this is true, it’s difficult to place a dollar value on “exposure” or “accessibility” and quantifiably see how effective it is in the long run.

Illegally downloading music is obviously looked down upon in the music industry, because nobody wants to work for free and receive no credit. To me, the difference between someone illegally downloading music and someone streaming music through a service that doesn’t compensate its artists is virtually non-existent. The artist is still receiving no return on their hard work–a problem that could prevent them financially from making more music in the long run, regardless of their popularity.

A similar discussion surrounded Taylor Swift when she pulled her music from Spotify last November before the release of 1989. Arguments arose over whether withholding her music from streaming sites punishes those who can’t afford it, or even caused her to lose sales because people were unwilling to make an investment on an album they hadn’t heard yet. (If she did lose sales, it wasn’t noticeable–1989 sold over 1.2 million albums in its first week, a number that hadn’t been seen in nearly 12 years.) But even that wasn’t the first time Taylor called attention to the idea of paying artists what they’re worth. She wrote an op ed piece for the Wall Street Journal about the value of music and compensating artists fairly.

Ultimately, every discussion I participate in about this subject seems to lead back to the same point:

People feel entitled to free art in a way they don’t feel about goods or services provided by nearly any other industry.

As a designer, it is unbelievable to me how often people expect me to work for free. I don’t see this happening in any other field of work, and I have to wonder when people stopped valuing art the way they value other commodities. Why should we feel entitled to free music or free museum tickets when we do not feel entitled to free plumbing services or free food?

Of course, maybe it really isn’t that we don’t value art. It’s not like fine art doesn’t sell for large sums of money anymore, or even that we don’t value the experience provided by artists by way of ticket sales for Broadway shows or ballets. But the wages provided to those dancers or performers or artists are often much lower than the perceived value of what they provide to us. How are we able to place value on the art but not on the artist who provides it to us?

This is a complicated issue, and a right answer or solution isn’t immediately clear. But in my opinion, artists deserve to be paid for their work in the same way any other professional deserves to be paid for theirs. I don’t think this is a complicated answer, or even should be debatable. The future of the arts has (unfortunately) always been slightly fragile, and I don’t see that changing any time soon, but I hold out hope that someday artists will receive the recognition they deserve–while they’re still around to enjoy it.