Taylor Swift recently made waveswhen her record label pulled her entire catalog off Spotify, apopular music streaming service. Fans and critics responded in turn, banging their chests and wailing in solidarity, meming and moaningacross the Twitterverseabout the plight of the Struggling Artist and the imperialism of mean old Master Spotify.

Yet as an avid and thoroughly satisfied Spotify user, I couldn’t help but think of the wide variety of artists sprinkled across my playlists, a diverse mix of superstars, one-hit-wonders, niche fixtures, and independent nobodies. With such reach and depth, had Spotify really duped and enslaved them all, leaving thembrainwashed andhelpless lest they rise to the courage, stature, and enlightened futurism of Ms. Swift?

Or could it be that some artists actually benefit from suchplatforms?

I’ve written elsewhereabout the transformativeeffects of economic freedom on the arts — how unleashing opportunity, innovation, and prosperity has yielded unprecedented amounts oftime, training, and resources, all of which can be used to create more art, and do so independently. For musicians, the cost of equipment continues to go down, even as quality goes up, and as artists continue to grab hold of these panieslike Spotify are swooping in to service the next step.

Much likeKickstarter and iTunes, Spotifycontinues to experiment with new ways ofempowering artists, helping folksbypassrecord labels altogether (“the banks,” “the marketing machine,” “the Man”) and connect them more closely with audiences. Countless artists have jumped in. And yes,countless others have opted out, particularly the ones with cash, fans, and sway.

Indeed, what’snotable about Swift’s departure is that it’s somewhat of a case study in Top 40 arm-wrestling. I can easily believe thatSpotify isnot the best option for Enterprise Swift, but does that make this ground zero for thecreative future of the music industry? Is this the supreme symbolic battle for the aforementionedStruggling Artist?

Over at Values and Capitalism, Wesley Gant dives deeper on this very point, pointing out the irony that swims throughoutthepro-Swift solidarity. Quoting Tom Barnes, Gant notes that, far from illuminating Spotify’s abuses, Swift’s move offers “proof that the old model is unfeasible for anyone but music’s 1%.”

“Spotify isn’t for the well-established artists,” Gant writes. “It’s for ing talentthat is begging for exposure, hoping that if just a small piece of the massive Spotify audience catches onto their music they can fill larger venues, sell more merchandise, and build a large enough following to land bigger deals.”

Spotify has surely found itsbelievers, even among the well-established, but of course it won’t work for everyone. As with any transaction or partnership, artists and labels oughtto assess the risks, costs, and benefits and make a decision that best fits their goals and interests— artistic, vocational, financial, andotherwise.

Which is why the problem in all this really has nothing to do with Swift’s decision, but with the sentiment es alongwith it, presumingthat good artists and goodart will somehow find theirway to the surface if only we’d stick to the same static prices and stale mechanisms of yore. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a pricetag of $9.99 ora track list that hugs thenumber10, but there’s nothing inherently right about iteither.

Spotify is not some savior of a solution, and indeed, itmay well fizzle as yet anotherunsustainable model and method for artists and panies alike. But ifwe approach these experiments with the type of knee-jerk skepticism and blind pessimism that has panied the Swift affair,the Struggling Artist will continue to confront the same roadblocks he faces today.

We shouldheed Swift’s reminderthat good art ought to be valued. But we can do so in a way that retains a widerimagination about the past, the present, and the future — one that appreciates the value of bottom-up empowerment and the type ofeconomic experimentation that got us this far in the first place.