Snowflake Royal Independent content creators would massively benefit on streaming and video services.
There's absolutely tons of copyright abuse stifling creativity there with big rights owners taking revenue from them.
Tom Scott has a pretty good video on why copyright law is horrendous given modern technology and industry.
I know a professional, award-winning, musician who has toured the world and played in huge arenas.
But she has another full-time job, because she can't live off her earnings from music.
When she makes a track, she pays for recording time, producers, backing musicians, promotion etc. It costs money. When people download her stuff for free, everybody gets paid except her. When her music is streamed on Spotify, she'd have to have more than a million listens to make £50 - and out of that £50, she has to pay a distributor to get the music onto Spotify. (spotify don't deal directly with artists). Think how many millions of listens would be required to pay for the recording equipment, the other musicians etc. Before
she gets any money.
I don't know how the youtube figures add up, but trust me, it's not much.
When she tours (god knows when that will happen again), she pays for the backing band, for visas, for travel arrangements, for accomodation (if accomodation is arranged, it effectively comes out of the concert fee) and so on.
Independent content creators do not benefit from exposure. They die of exposure. Exposure costs money - and if no-one is willing to pay for that content, because they think they can should be able to get it for free, then you won't get professional musicians doing their own thing "independently". Because they'll decide that the need to eat trumps the need to do what they do best.
Obviously huge artists with massive worldwide followings will earn enough to make a very good living from what they do. But not everybody wants to listen to Coldplay, or Drake, or whatever the cool kids are at now.
I'll tell you what stifles creativity - it's being forced to appeal to the lowest possible denominator, in order to be popular enough to survive on your earnings.
And you know what else stifles creativity - it isn't "copyright abuse"- it's ACTUAL copyright abuse, as in, refusing to pay for stuff that has been created, because you think they should be glad you like it, and that's enough. It's difficult being creative if your creativity is being squeezed into the corners of your everyday life, because of the time you've got to give over to earning enough to live on.
I'm sure there are things that are wrong with current copyright law. But at least it is making
some attempt to get the money made from content, to the people who made that content.