As one of the highest-profile streaming windowers, the thought of Taylor Swift writing an opinion piece about digital music is an intriguing prospect. And that’s exactly what she’s done for the Wall Street Journal. Her overall tone is optimistic – “one of the few living souls in the music industry who still believes that the music industry is not dying… it’s just coming alive” – but her views on albums may not make easy reading for streaming services. “There are many (many) people who predict the downfall of music sales and the irrelevancy of the album as an economic entity. I am not one of them. In my opinion, the value of an album is, and will continue to be, based on the amount of heart and soul an artist has bled into a body of work, and the financial value that artists (and their labels) place on their music when it goes out into the marketplace,” writes Swift. “Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for. It’s my opinion that music should not be free, and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album’s price point is. I hope they don’t underestimate themselves or undervalue their art…”
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In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…