Earning a living from popular/folk music is a very recent thing, historically speaking. Earning a living from musical recordings is even more recent. Although it's a great way of making a living as an artist, there's nothing inherent about it - a coming together of technology, capitalism and culture has made the paid-for music recording a possibility. It will not always be this way. It's changing already. There's music 'as a service' - pay £8 a month and listen to as much recoreded music as you like! There's artists making money through live performance, using the recorded album as promotional material. There's honesty/donation payments direct to the band. There's artists reaching a global audience, but only on the internet. The whole notion of what music is, who owns it, who creates it and how much it costs all participants, is very much up in the air.
Now this is closer to the emerging reality than "artists have worked to create the music therefore they have a right to be paid for it".
In an economic system, no-one has a right to be paid for
anything. It's just supply and demand. Work has an economic value where it can't be obtained free. I'm no feminist but look at the situation with the traditional role of women in childcare. Any objective observation of that activity would make it look like work. And yet much of it goes unpaid.
Economically again, the value of music is to do with its comparative differentiation or commodification. We all know that there are numerous talented artists out there making fantastic music, but almost no-one knows about them. They don't have recording contracts or a marketing machine behind them. Is their work inferior to the latest clone band chart-toppers? No. Is it economically less valuable? Of course. The difference? Marketing. That's what you're paying for.
Marketing creates the desire to consume one product rather than a substitute. In the music industry, it often creates the desire to pay for bad music instead of obtaining good music free.
But marketing isn't art. The art itself not only often is created with no intention of seeking reward, but it can be distributed and publicised nearly-free.
Extending Crispy's point, the economic value of music
recordings is just a historical blip due to a transient convergence of social ideas and technology. That time is now passing. The vast majority of artists won't be any worse off than they ever were. Many of them may even be better off, managing to obtain small recompense from a niche audience rather than an all-or-nothing success-or-die situation that has existed up until recently. The people in the business of selling music
recordings, though, will definitely be worse off. Their industry is becoming increasingly irrelevant and very soon they will be disintermediated out of existence.
None of this is an invitation to steal other people's music, in as much as that concept is a valid one. If someone is offering their music for sale, you have a moral obligation to pay the price or pass on by. But economically, you have many other options that ultimately will completely undermine that business model.
