When you pay the contractor (or, to the other reply to my parent comment, to Fender), presumably it's very clear what you're paying for. You're exchanging dollars for a very specific good/service.

When you "buy" a CD/MP3/what-have-you, you're buying a license to that song, not "the song", which would be much, much more expensive. In fact, it's difficult to figure out how much the song is worth up-front, which is why there are generally licensing deals. That way the artist gets compensated according to how well the song does: if a lot of people like it, they make a lot of money. If nobody likes it, they make no money. Seems fair to me.

I guess a more accurate analogy would be if you designed a specific type of product and paid a carpenter to make it. Then you see him open a store that sells that item to a million people for 10x what you paid him, even though he directly ripped off your designs. He's profiting off of your work & ideas, with no compensation to you. Obviously this assumes that it's a novel idea, etc, but I think it's a bit more accurate.

I get that it's not a physical good but the mathematics of:

  Made by <Creator> + Enjoyed By <Person> = Endless Money for <Creator>

doesn't add up in the simplistic way that people like to make it seem. "As long as you're enjoying it why shouldn't you be paying for it" seems to be a common mantra on HN during these discussions.

I might enjoying staring at a city skyline too, but that doesn't mean that I need to pay royalties to each and every architect that designed those buildings.

> if a lot of people like it, they make a lot of money. If nobody likes it, they make no money. Seems fair to me.

But for how long? 100+ years after the author is dead and buried? Seems a bit extreme.

Your math isn't correct. It's not one person continuously paying the artist. It's every time the company makes money by playing the song, they pay the artist.