It's been 15+ years since Napster. The solution to a problem is never THAT complicated. We are not searching for the cure for cancer here.

There is no solution, do you really think all the marketing experts are idiots? Piracy is hurting all types of artforms, it cannot be stopped unless you create a police state and break into peoples houses and manually delete all the pirated stuff they have every week or so. It's not gonna happen.

It is not possible to earn decent money by selling music anymore. Who's the most hyped musician today, Kanye? How rich is he compared to some random tech company related businessman, not even talking about people like Bill Gates, but smaller guys like Sean Parker, founder of Napster. Kanye is a nobody even compared to a guy like this, sure he's way more famous but he's 100 times less rich.

When an up and coming musician sees how little society values the biggest musician today he'll start having doubts about whether or not pursuing a music career is even sustainable. Kanye has to associate himself with so many external things, outside of music, in order to make that money, that's the saddest part. A musician who doesn't want to whore themselves out and appear at every fashion show, sell shoes and perfumes will never earn the amount of money Kanye makes, which is a joke when compared to the richest people from other non-creative fields of life.

It's only gonna get worse, the middle class will start dying. Hopefully we will still have creative musicians be born into a rich family that will support their music career, like the Grizzly Bear or Strokes guys.