The entire discussion is headache-inducing.
1) "Music is art," ...by definition.
2) "Art is important and rare." A particular piece of art may be important and rare. The quality of being art does not make things either important and rare.
3) "Important, rare things are valuable." Tautologically. Valuable things are important and rare. Value is defined by relative scarcity and relative desire.
4) "Valuable things should be paid for." My mother's love is valuable (and important and rare - I can't get it from anyone else.)
Patel is stating the obvious - the scarcity of Taylor Swift's music is a government-granted monopoly aided by technology that is largely unenforceable on the internet. He's being patronizing in even pretending like Swift was making a coherent argument, and he's not addressing it, but ignoring it.
> If consumers were unwilling to pay much for Swift's music because of the vast quantity of alternatives available on the Internet, Patel would indeed have a point. But consumers still want Swift's music, not other peoples' music. Even in the face of huge amounts of free alternatives, consumers still want Swift's music. That only proves Swift's point!
Not really. The mean price paid to listen to a Taylor Swift song has got to be at the sub-cent level. The average price paid to listen to obscurities that 99.99% of people have never heard of is going to be significantly higher.