Then fees for use must be set by the government and allow for $0 fees for satire of and commentary on the licensed material. $0 for non-profit use, too. Fees for other uses should be kept in check and published on a schedule.

There needs to be a government clearinghouse for acquiring these licenses so that progress isn’t held up by bitchy content creators. Of course this government licensing house will have to collect these fees and it’s not free to run the clearing house by any means so they’ll keep a giant chunk of the fees collected.

In the end we’ll have greater complexity, even less creator control and you’ll still not make any money off your trash.

Great plan, sparky.

Moreover, there are good reasons to wonder where those profits are. If you dig into the RIAA numbers you can reasonably ask if most of those revenue increases are going to the musical 1%, meaning the A list musicians.
A better question is how healthy is the music industry? When I taught this to graduate level Communications majors I framed it in terms of what does a healthy entertainment industry look like and how does it work? For me, as someone who consumes non A list artists, I want to see an industry where there is enough revenue generated for independent artists to keep making money and more importantly, good art. That is a much harder question to answer.

I could tell you what happened to me. I am an artist. Many years ago I was sending so many demos to many different labels, major or smaller, independent and whatnot. Nobody ever replied to me, or if they did it was to tell me that my work was not accepted. Since I believed that my music was worthy and I was exasperated, the moment when eventually one label, a smaller independent one, became interested in it, I was elated. They sent me the contract to sign. I read it and it seemed OK, the royalty rate was fine. But it was an exclusive contract, and what I didn’t understand (because it was worded in a very unobvious way) was that it would last all of my lifetime. But since I was so happy that somebody finally replied to me, I just said "well, fuck it, let’s do it" and signed it…

They published my music in almost every online store of that time. It even went to the top charts of a couple of them. But the royalty statements never arrived, as it was specified in the contract. Nor the money. At that point I started to think twice. It was just by chance that I happened to stumble upon a myspace profile (this was in myspace times) where another artist signed to the label was explaining in very clear terms that they were scammers and he was warning others not to make the same mistake as he did (signing to them). He said there were at least 50-100 other artists in the same situation. He even wanted to push a class action, but at the end decided against it since it would have been too costly to do it internationally, as the label was foreign. The label made sure that not only this myspace profile was deleted, but all of his other personal profiles.

Fast forward to today’s times, there are still artists signed to them complaining about this on the Facebook page of this label but they are systematically deleted. They even delete reviews… I thought it wasn’t possible to do it on Facebook, but they are doing it, and the process is very expeditious, so it seems that it’s possible. They ignore emails, they don’t reply to anything, but they keep that damn money.

It was only later when I signed to a better and trusted label (and with a non-exclusive, decently timed contract) and I told them my experience with the previous label that these new label people explicitly told me: "we hear stories like yours all the time and it’s terrible". So it means that stories like mine are much more widespread than usually thought, and artists don’t talk of it either because of shame, guilt or because they are censored by the labels themselves.

This is my story and I was signed to a small independent label, and we also hear stories everywhere that major labels have the same shenanigans, if not worse. It is only when I finally could take back control over my own music, and I could sell it through non-exclusive contracts and websites such as Bandcamp, that I finally saw some revenue coming in. And it seems that many if not most artists are in the same situation as me. So why now this insane push for Article 13? Could it be that with these new direct-selling websites, artists can finally take back what they are owed and what belongs to them, and labels can’t accept this because apparently they think they are the only ones who can gather artists’ money, without even having the need to pay it back to them, the rightful creators? Who is the real pirate here? And who needs these middlemen, when direct-selling websites make their job a million times better than them, and even pay the artists? If Article 13 becomes law, it will mean that we are back to the situation when artists need a permit from these gatekeepers to publish their own creativity and their own work. And who with a sane mind would want to go back to that situation? And who appointed these gatekeepers as the arbiters of what is to be published and what not? And if anyone can’t see the potential for misuse and abuse within this system, especially after stories like mine, then they’re clearly deluded.

Anyway, I also consume non A list artists and I make my own effort to promote them, so that they can continue to make good art. As for them to keep making money, that is always a question mark, because if they are signed to any kind of label, smaller or bigger, it means that they have middlemen managing their money, and there is always the question if these middlemen are doing a good job or are honest. And the vast majority of evidence says that they aren’t, sadly. I urge any artist to think twice before signing exlusive contracts that last a lifetime, or even any exclusive contract, and go for non-exclusive ones and websites like Bandcamp. Your sanity, your wallet, and your faith in the human race will thank you for it.

I even hear there are many cases where labels lull hopeful artists into signing contracts and then disappear without even publishing them anywhere. What kind of sick, twisted, foolish people would do that to another human being? Not publishing an artist who wants to be published, and shelving their art with an exclusive contract so that they cannot do anything with it anymore, is akin to killing them. In fact, you can count yourself lucky if you were published, even if they didn’t pay you. When they don’t even publish you, even if you signed a contract with them, you have to ask yourself if your music was considered a threat for someone or something, a competition that was too risky to have around, and so they shut it down. That is the "magic" of gatekeepers and middlemen. I think that in 2019 we have all the right to be done with this bullshit, no? So please banish that scourge of Article 13 and wipe it off the face of the earth! Go nuclear with it!

You also have to consider that artists are most often very sensitive people, and with the labels doing bullshit like this, and preying on them like vultures, their mental situation could be destabilized.