>The solution then would be to find a way to charge not for the copies, but for the time effort that the artist put into the production of the music. But this

>The solution then would be to find a way to charge not for the copies, but for the time effort that the artist put into the production of the music. But this method would be anti-consumer for many buyers of music because the final quality of a song does not always correlate with effort. - low effort but high value: a musician can have a flash of inspiration and come up with a catchy chorus melody and great intro hook on a synth in 15 minutes. They then record the vocals in 2 or 3 takes and thus the whole song is done in less than a day. This ends up being a hit song. - high effort but low value: an artist struggles for weeks and months on composing a song with many rewrites. The producer brings in a dozen other co-writers to help finish it. When they go to record, they record 100 different takes of the vocal and then construct the final vocal by splicing in syllable-by-syllable from the different takes. Very laborious. And yet, the final result is music that's heavily produced but lacks an addictive chorus and does not compel repeat listens. A lot of movies and its sequels are like that. The original on a shoestring budget had a better story and a magic quality but the new sequel with a $200 million budget and an army of special fx artists ends up creating a dud.