“there are more people in the music business than just the record label scum and that gets overlooked.”

It does indeed. And those artists do get squeezed in the middle. If the “music industry” as represented by greedy labels had just quietly laid down and died during the days of napster then today the centralized model would still be in effect. Meaning that as a musician you COULD have payouts from radio levies and advertising in just the same way as it would then be possible to record how many times a piece of music was streamed.

“and the “taxes” do not matter if what you’re getting is priced fairly. there are all kinds of “taxes” on goods. you’re not getting an over priced CDR.”

The levy in sweden tacks on a solid 15% over and above the usual cost of a USB drive, for instance. I’d call that rather unfair, given that VERY FEW use such a device for storage of copied copyrighted files.

Taxes do indeed matter when you get an effective 40% VAT instead of a 25%. Which has resulted in a massive boom in various storage media being purchased in bulk online from places where such a levy does not exist.

Artists have known this since the cassette tape was invented. It’s just that such artists don’t get paid media time unlike the few ones who stand up and cry people a river about how “hometaping is killing music”.