Yeah, if you want artists to be able to devote their lives to their craft and reach the highest possible levels, they have to get paid enough to do that.

If all artists are "weekend warriors", they will still produce a lot of art, and some of it will be the best in that world. But the quality will be far from what we enjoy today.

That said, there are of course other ways to pay artists than the capitalist way of having customers pay for what they like. But I think the track record firmly favors a capitalist system.