Piracy, patronage, and plentitude

I came across a post by Steve Bell, a Christian musician on the subject of how musicians can get enough money to live on given the cheap copying the internet allows. He mentions that

... artists like myself have to reconsider the patronage model again.

Probably true. I'm not sure how much of a difference this really is from the past though. He also notes that

... music, as a marketable commodity is relatively new, historically. Before the 1930?s there was no recorded music ... If you wanted to hear music, you had to actually be in the presence of a musician or make it yourself.

Again true. It's not quite the patronage mode - in that here payment to musicians is more in line with services rendered. Still it's a bit suggestive that the current model of music is the historical oddity.

Steve Bell argues that those listening to his music are less likely to pirate than their counterparts but argues that certain other effects from piracy are present:

Because of widespread piracy, the record companies, in order to entice people to buy music again, have significantly dropped the prices of recorded music. ... Music has been de-valued in people’s minds and they simply won’t pay more that $15 (at the most) for a CD.

Another by-product of piracy is that since musicians have lost retail sales revenue, they are forced to be out on the road more to generate income. We have noticed it is getting harder to get communities to commit to concerts simply because there are too many of them. So, another by-product of Internet piracy is that there is increased competition for the live concert stage.

I buy both arguments to a certain extent, but I wonder if another reason is simply the flooding of the market. The cost to create an electronic copy of a song is virtually nonexistant, but if anything the number of musicians has seen a dramatic increase. To get an idea of how things have changed in other sectors, "In 1870, 70-80 percent of the US population was employed in agriculture. As of 2008, approximately 2-3 percent of the population is directly employed in agriculture." (WP) whereas musical "productivity" (as measured by the cost to have a piece of music playing in the background in any given location) has increased much more dramatically while a lot more people seem to be training for (non-existant?) jobs in the area. Here's what colleges have been doing:

In 2009 the U.S. graduated 89,140 students in the visual and performing arts, more than in computer science, math and chemical engineering combined and more than double the number of visual and performing arts graduates in 1985.

Too many musicians seems to be another part of the picture that's somewhat ignored. Given the miniscule costs to reproduce music these days, I can't say that I really see a future for anything other than the patronage or hobbyist models for future music.

Steve Bell also overplays the copying=theft card - they're not quite the same thing. One way in which this feeds back into his argument: Back in the 1930s when music wasn't a "marketable commodity" what percentage of music was produced by professional musicians vs. amateurs? How much of whatever music that amateurs sung would have been music upon which copyright would have lapsed? Does he believe that musicians and corporations are stealing from the public given the continual extensions to copyright length in recent decades?

(All parts of Lord of the Rings would have been in the public domain today given the laws at the time - see, e.g., Duke University's page on this - with those already being an extension upon some of the earlier versions of copyright law tried out in some countries).