Copyright laws are just there to screw smaller creators, on TV they have agreements with the monopoly license fee holders and they just put whatever they want without asking anybody.
That’s a bit of an oversimplification. Smaller creators who are making music absolutely can and do benefit from the fees that pass through the “monopoly license fee holders” - collective management organisations. For example in the UK if a song that you wrote and recorded (and for which you control exclusive rights over the song copyright and the recording copyright) is played on BBC Radio 2 (the biggest national radio station by audience numbers) then you will be paid around £100 per minute.
So each time a three minute song is played you’ll get £300.
Now, obviously, the chances of an independent artist without the mechanisms of big record labels may struggle to get the music into the hands of the gatekeepers who make the decisions about what is played, but it does happen.
I agree though that the copyright implementation around incidental use of what is essentially stock music in a wider creation is something that can seem a bit out of whack. The biggest issue is around metadata and the way information identifying rights holders passes through the digital supply chain. Unless a video creator was able to clearly identify the rights holders in incidentally music then the blunt instrument of “this is copyright material, block/monetise/rev share” is currently really the only thing that prevents “bad actors” exploiting copyright music for their benefit.
So each time a three minute song is played you’ll get £300.
Now, obviously, the chances of an independent artist without the mechanisms of big record labels may struggle to get the music into the hands of the gatekeepers who make the decisions about what is played, but it does happen.
I agree though that the copyright implementation around incidental use of what is essentially stock music in a wider creation is something that can seem a bit out of whack. The biggest issue is around metadata and the way information identifying rights holders passes through the digital supply chain. Unless a video creator was able to clearly identify the rights holders in incidentally music then the blunt instrument of “this is copyright material, block/monetise/rev share” is currently really the only thing that prevents “bad actors” exploiting copyright music for their benefit.