Yes, enough scraps from the masters table trickles down so that the musicians and artists don't starve, but the successes of their labors are severely gouged by the elite. This system is fucked and the only way to fix it is to eliminate the incentive for big-business to steal peoples works and send them scraps. One way to do this is to limit copyright length and only let extensions to copyright apply to the person who actually made the art/music to begin with within their own lifetime. Inheritance of copyrights should be totally eliminated. This way, you could build a portfolio of works and become an asset yourself rather than be an expendable employee where your record label gets to keep everything you create and axe you whenever they feel like it, meanwhile continuing to profit off of your hard work for over a century. Many wealthy stay wealthy by being parasites on other peoples labor, just like feudal Europe. They gouge the profits from the labor off of enough people and pocket the profits from it. Its feudalism cleverly masked as free market, plain and simple. I have written 50+ songs over the years, and it is a massive time investment. It usually took 10-20 hours per song just to "get it right", then even more time to record it, master it, etc. Do I think I deserve money for it or am entitled to profits? Nope, only if people like it and want to buy it, but I'll be damned if someone is going to "own" my songs when I was the one that created them (many with my friend who I consider 50/50 co-owner). My children have no right to "own" my songs either, because they can go create their own if they want. Once I die, I expect all of my works to enter the public domain, as it should be. I would even support that happening after 20 years. After all, many songs from the 60's are sufficienty wide spread they should be considered public domain, as they have integrated into our culture.
