>>As a musician in a previous career, I am shocked that you announce that you prefer to steal your music instead of paying a pittance for it and rewarding the people who worked hard to gain the skills so you could enjoy it. They didn’t do it so you could have your music for nothing, you know. <<
I used to tell my daughters, back in 1998, that RECORDED music would become the equivalent of the free toy in the happy meal. I think musicians should be like basketball players. They get paid for live performances and what comes from them. The “do it once and get paid forever” paradigm ended a while back.
There are not enough live performance opportunities anymore for your economic model to work. There once were and that WAS the model for musicians and performers. Recordings killed that model.
Once upon a time radio stations even in small markets employed musicians in bands for live broadcasts and vaudeville kept several Theaters full of Orchestra musicians employed. Even silent films kept at least an organist or a piano player employed at every house. Not so any longer. What once required hundreds can be accomplished by one, recorded, then replayed. The paradigm changed and so did the payment method. Jukeboxes replaced the bar musician, and musak replaced the restaurant background entertainer...