I continue to enjoy my Macbook, and even make money using it, but I don't keep paying Apple. I'm sure those artists don't continue to pay Fender for the instruments they use to make the songs, etc.

I don't necessarily disagree with you, just thinking out loud.

I don't think anybody is arguing that you should have to pay continuously for ownership of a song you bought. But if we extend the Macbook metaphor to Spotify's case: a Spotify user didn't buy a Macbook, they're paying a subscription fee for the freedom to use a wide variety of computers, and the subscription service compensates the computer manufacturers based on how many users choose to use their model. This incentivizes creators to create good things, so that users pick their creation, so that they have income.

Well, if you go to your local store and buy the album, you can listen to it as many times as you want and not keep paying the artist.

When a contractor builds an addition on my house that addition could be enjoyed by people for years and years, yet that contractor was paid a one-time fee. Do you find this unfair?

When you pay the contractor (or, to the other reply to my parent comment, to Fender), presumably it's very clear what you're paying for. You're exchanging dollars for a very specific good/service.

When you "buy" a CD/MP3/what-have-you, you're buying a license to that song, not "the song", which would be much, much more expensive. In fact, it's difficult to figure out how much the song is worth up-front, which is why there are generally licensing deals. That way the artist gets compensated according to how well the song does: if a lot of people like it, they make a lot of money. If nobody likes it, they make no money. Seems fair to me.

I guess a more accurate analogy would be if you designed a specific type of product and paid a carpenter to make it. Then you see him open a store that sells that item to a million people for 10x what you paid him, even though he directly ripped off your designs. He's profiting off of your work & ideas, with no compensation to you. Obviously this assumes that it's a novel idea, etc, but I think it's a bit more accurate.

I get that it's not a physical good but the mathematics of:

  Made by <Creator> + Enjoyed By <Person> = Endless Money for <Creator>

doesn't add up in the simplistic way that people like to make it seem. "As long as you're enjoying it why shouldn't you be paying for it" seems to be a common mantra on HN during these discussions.

I might enjoying staring at a city skyline too, but that doesn't mean that I need to pay royalties to each and every architect that designed those buildings.

> if a lot of people like it, they make a lot of money. If nobody likes it, they make no money. Seems fair to me.

But for how long? 100+ years after the author is dead and buried? Seems a bit extreme.

Your math isn't correct. It's not one person continuously paying the artist. It's every time the company makes money by playing the song, they pay the artist.