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It is perhaps shameful and most definitely uncool to admit that I know far more about Taylor Swift's views on the economics of the music business than I do about her chart-topping music.

Frankly, her music is not my cup of tea but she makes a great deal of sense when writing about the illogicality of artists giving away their music for free or almost free. "It's my opinion," she wrote, "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."

She is putting her money where her mouth is by withdrawing albums from Spotify, the popular Swedish-based music-sharing website that offers users free and some very low-cost access to a vast music library and gives the originators of this work very little in return.

There are exceptions because selling porn over the internet has become a large and viable business and there are many smaller but usually highly specialised sites that can charge for their content and make a buck. Other than that, the people making real money out of the internet are search engines and product sellers who are starting to eclipse traditional retailers as a means of distribution.

However, when it comes, for example, to Amazon selling books or even camping gear, consumers are fully aware that they need to pay for what they get. When it comes to music, the written word or even images, there is an assumption that all this should be for free.

This is why most media companies are in big trouble and why people who produce "content" are in despair as to how they can monetise it.

One reason why I spend the bulk of my working week engaged in the food business is that no one expects to get food for free and even where producers of words are still working for the traditional media, we are painfully aware that budgets are squeezed and, as matters stand, there will be no rapid turnaround.

This leads to a mood of defeatism, but Swift, who in business terms, should be described as a market leader, refuses to concede defeat and argues that the only way to get a fair deal for intellectual property is to withdraw selling rights from companies whose business model involves obtaining intellectual property for pennies.

This is much easier said than done and it needs many more Taylor Swifts to make it work. However, some media companies have been successful in getting their consumers to pay reasonable sums of money for access to their material through the internet. Others have not; even the mighty News Corp has been humbled in its attempts to put newspapers behind a paywall.

Meanwhile, some newspaper companies, notably , have been far more successful and even humble book writers are finding ways to bypass traditional publishers and make money out of internet distribution.

The crucial issue is critical mass. If pop music fans can still find enough free music, they will be highly tempted to avoid paying for work by people like Taylor Swift, but the temptation will diminish as they see other quality artists disappearing from the free lists, leaving inferior music priced, maybe correctly, at the sum of zero.

The media business world is fiercely competitive, yet it will require a great deal of cooperation to restore this business onto a viable platform that provides a reasonable deal for both suppliers and customers.

It is hard to think of other commercial sectors that have faced a dilemma of this dimension but certain basic facts of business life remain unchanged. For example, it is a fact that people will pay more for better products and services, that convenience and user friendliness come at a premium price and that there is a good market for higher priced goods precisely because they have the cache and brand strength to satisfy a market looking for exclusive goods.

It is far from clear whether the new order created by the internet business world has fundamentally changed the basic rules of business. And it remains to be seen whether media companies will be smart enough to develop more profit-earning streams for business derived from the internet, but it is far too early to start writing obituaries for the providers of intellectual property because there will always be demand for quality in this sphere just as there is in every form of business.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: The high cost of free

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