Where do you listen to music? Probably not just at concerts—it’s hard to escape a set of speakers in a regular day, pumping out tunes in your dorm room, in a store, on a set of headphones, in your car, etc. We enjoy the work of musicians all the time, so how exactly do we support them?

It’s gratifying to artists when people listen to their work, which could be considered one form of support. Sure, musicians play music because they like to, but rarely do they perform like hermits. Music is a social language; we play for each other. So ignoring financial concerns, it seems like society supports music a lot, with our mp3 players blasting songs all over the place.

Although, what classes or localities of music does society support this way? The pop-music industry farms out a small number of songs to the entire country. And not just Katy Perry, but over and over again, people also “support” the established, famous, great musicians. From Beethoven to the Beatles, every generation gives them a listen. Do we give lesser-known contemporary musicians equal support? It’s trendy, bumper-sticker identity politics to say something like, “support local music,” which isn’t the focus of what I’m suggesting. I take a more comprehensive perspective, that we should pay attention to the makeup of our music portfolios. If you want to support the broader world of music but only listen to Top 40, that’s a pretty limited scope of “support.” And luckily, we now have access to a much wider “local” music scene online. You don’t have to be in Seattle to discover the bands there anymore, for example.

A complementary question might be: how important is music to you? Perhaps you use it merely as part of the background environment in your daily life, or as a significant emotional experience, or something else entirely. Some would argue that if you like and listen to music a lot, you should be predicted to support the musicians more. Do you?

This is where we get into the finances. In the last decade, computers have changed the music recording industry significantly—a topic much discussed before. I don’t want to get into issues concerning what’s the most “fair” or “right” system to distribute recordings to people. From Napster knockoffs to Internet radio to bands making their music fully available, there are many models to discuss.

What I want to ask is the financial side of this column’s title: do you support musicians? How do you participate in the system in such a way that the musicians get paid for what they do? Be it through advertising revenue on Internet radio stations, concert tickets, purchases on iTunes, some donation mechanism or something innovative—if society wants to assist this part of the workforce, it needs to use some type of channel to do so. Clearly a lot of systems are in place and revenue does flow to musicians. I’m simply trying to remind the reader to consider your role and contribution.

Because unfortunately, when recorded music is so readily available, it’s easy for us to be free riders. You could download all sorts of music, making for hours, days and weeks of entertainment, without a cent ever going to a musician. That system assumes musicians must be (unhealthily) in it exclusively “for the art.” Having access to so much music is great, but we need to make sure we give back. And not just for fairness reasons—but because musicians are, by reputation, financially strapped.

I ask because I love music and I love that so many other people also love music and spend their lives creating it. I want them to be able to comfortably keep doing it. And to be honest, I’ve been a free rider too, downloading my share of songs. So I’m happy to pay for concerts, buy young bands’ albums on iTunes, and once I have extra income I hope to donate to the arts, maybe through some cool musician-microfinance scheme. Is it an optimal setup? Probably not. But I’m confident that we will keep figuring this thing out and continue to improve the situation.

Because in the end, arguments about “stealing music” are a turn-off to everyone. Engaging in positive discussions and brainstorming about how to support musicians is much more constructive.

Any cool ideas? E-mail [email protected].