I haven't seen anyone here saying musicians shouldn't get paid when they perform for an audience or for a certain purpose (let's say a commercial or soundtrack)
And if you are an indie dev, you probably do make money from the software in its commodified form. And if you are not an indie dev, then your high salary is because someone else makes a lot of money from the software's commodified form (even if that form today is as a service). The point of the article is that musicians can no longer make any money from the commodified (in this regard meaning recorded) form of their music.
The arts publishing/management/distribution businesses have always been about relentlessly screwing value out of creators, usually by leveraging differences in political and corporate power to intimidate and bully creators into "voluntarily" signing over their income in return for access to various walled-garden markets.
Streaming media have really taken it to a new level.
Spotify currently spends 79% of its revenues on royalties. How much more do you think they should spend?
You're absolutely right! Artists, programmers, attorneys, and doctors are all exactly the same. They should get paid under the circumstances where someone with money finds their work to be valuable. Some portion of each specialty will find that others value their work enough to allow them to live by their work alone.
Is it perhaps possible that the relative size of this portion might differ between specialties? Perhaps in a way that reflects the relative number of people willing and able to do the work, and possibly also reflective of the level of demand?
Pretty sure that RMS is advocating for that kind of vision.
"Pretty sure that RMS is advocating for that kind of vision."
That's a common misconception. He actually has no problem with programmers making money.
The GNU Project has an article on this, which starts by saying:
"Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU Project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible--just enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding.
"Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can."
More here:
with subtext being > "good luck if somebody attempts to undercut your prices though."
The corresponding model for artists is the Wu-tang clan selling the sole copy of their album to Martin Shkreli.