What you are calling charity (which also lumps in patronage since patrons don't pay "fair market prices") is precisely how music has been funded for hundreds of years and how classical/orchestral music continues to survive today. No one funds opera houses or gets their name on one of the bricks because they think it's a smart business decision or a fair market transaction. It will hopefully continue to be a big part of the equation going forward, I think a whole community being able to see live orchestral music based on the generosity of a few is a good thing that should continue.
Your whole comment is somewhat baffling to me as you decry "charity" or anything not based in free-market economics as "not the way" but provide little in the way of specifics on what should be done, other than that we should "reconsider the more fundamental assumptions".
Here's the fundamental assumption being reconsidered: the idea that the only value the consumer derives from a product is the direct first-order utility or pleasure they get from using the product. Let me put it this way: there's a market for "free trade" coffee that is more expensive than regular coffee. Is that charity? I don't think so, instead I think it recognizes that there is actual economic value in the consumer's personal satisfaction or belief that they are purchasing something sustainable, that they can feel good about. Call it charity if you want, but it is a very real economic force.
> is precisely how music has been funded for hundreds of years and how classical/orchestral music continues to survive today
You're quite right about this. That's why it's important that I'm strongly of the view that the economic realities of music making have changed. The difference is that now a vastly larger number of people are making music, because technology has made this possible, and individual pieces of music are reaching vastly larger audiences, thanks to the "free-copy" effect of files.
If the goal were to preserve music (the cultural institution of music) exactly as it has existed for hundreds of years, your approach (patronage) would be sufficient. This is what I meant when I said that we could just conclude that making and consuming music aren't values as such. As long as there's enough music to go around, as much as anyone needs, then that's enough and we should not make any more. In other words, this is the view that concludes that the market is right, that it has accurately priced in the way we value (or don't value) music. Individual compositions and performances are intrinsically fungible.
My view is that we have larger possibilities. That the democratization and wide-scale production of music, even too much music, is itself an expression of a human good and that it makes sense for a society to support it for that reason, even though it is incapable of generating profits that would pay for itself. My point is that this huge over-production of music is something that cannot, like the music of the past, be paid for by individual acts of charity. That was something that only worked when there was only a certain amount of "good" music that needed to be sustained.
I believe that most people who listen to music instinctively embrace part of my view (that music is a human good as such), but are trapped into thinking that the only way in which "fair" and "unfair" can be assessed is in the commodity price of the work. I'm trying to show that this is incoherent: if whatever the market says is the value of music is the end of the story, then most music is simply not valuable and you get something like the present hierarchy of artists, with a handful of multimillionaires at the top and a majority making almost nothing at the bottom. You can't bypass that by trying to force the idea of a "fair share of value" into our current system for determining values, which is simply incompatible with that.
Edit: let me spell out something that may be unclear about my view. Part of what I'm getting at is that there is an enormous gap between "fair market value + charity" (as I would have it) or "fair market value, including the value of fair remuneration" (as you would have it) and meeting the actual material needs of most artists. Even the most expansive view of "fair trade music", or whatever, is not going to say that individual people should be paying more than $20 an album or so. The market value of a work of art cannot be taken to automatically contain the necessary remuneration to ensure that the creator earns a living wage through their work. To wish that it did is to wish that market prices ceased to function as prices.
So even on the most wishful version of "fair" payment under a market pricing scheme, the vast majority of artists won't be paid enough (where "enough" is read in the intuitive way I have in mind that reflects the real human value inherent in creating music). We can either be okay with that, and say that the current system (with a few adjustments, perhaps) is fine, or we can say that some human goods that cannot be priced into a free market are also worth achieving.
Your whole comment is somewhat baffling to me as you decry "charity" or anything not based in free-market economics as "not the way" but provide little in the way of specifics on what should be done, other than that we should "reconsider the more fundamental assumptions".
Here's the fundamental assumption being reconsidered: the idea that the only value the consumer derives from a product is the direct first-order utility or pleasure they get from using the product. Let me put it this way: there's a market for "free trade" coffee that is more expensive than regular coffee. Is that charity? I don't think so, instead I think it recognizes that there is actual economic value in the consumer's personal satisfaction or belief that they are purchasing something sustainable, that they can feel good about. Call it charity if you want, but it is a very real economic force.