I completely agree. The minimum wage figure was just a reference point that aligns with the way we pay for it: monthly. It's ridiculous music has (been) moved into this area.
The same problem is in the software industry now. More and more companies move to subscription business models simply because a pay-upfront model isn't viable anymore. Sure, it's great to support developers in their endeavours, but what if I just want to buy this exact version of the app and decide for myself if I want to pay for bug fixes and extra features later? Maybe this version is fine for me. But the new business reality doesn't allow for this.
Anyways..
> No other job expects to be paid forever for work done years ago; if someone hires me to build a fence, I don't expect to keep being paid for every year that fence is up.
The entire intellectual property licensing space works in this way, and that space is badly broken. I agree that there's no moral requirement to pay someone for work done years ago, and the reality is that most musicians really aren't. A quality recording takes a long time to make and its average lifespan is about a year (if that) before attention (if any) dies out.
On top of that it requires a big investment to record, produce and promote an album (consider also a new website, logo and album art) and then after all you have to share the $0.00029 per song play with about five people and the label. You're lucky to break even at all.
If you wanted to figure out the wage, you would have to take the number of hours spend creating the music (writing, practicing, recording), then divide by (revenue from streaming - costs to record). Since that streaming revenue can keep going long after they are done recording, you are going to hit minimum wage if you wait long enough and people keep streaming your music.
Artists deserve to be compensated for their work, but we should be thinking about it in terms of income per hour worked. No other job expects to be paid forever for work done years ago; if someone hires me to build a fence, I don't expect to keep being paid for every year that fence is up.