I'm not sure art is the exemplar you want to bring up. There's a reason that the "starving artist" is a meme. And, previous to modern times, art was largely a patronage-based business.
I never claimed earlier economic models for creative works were optimal either. :)
But I do think with today's increasingly short attention spans, the granularity of consuming creative works keeps going down, which makes the transaction friction more and more of a problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage#Arts