Often this is the only way.

The predatory nature of the industry isn’t much different than current laws on the service industry wages and tipping. For anyone not a big name movie star paid millions for their appearance, they are getting (comparably) below-minimum wage pay and hoping for tips (royalties, if any). The industry puts a lot of the real risk on the lowest levels who have no decisions, but they take the highest reward while blaming those people for bad decisions. That doesn’t sound fair to me.

It’s also a lot like our grocery supply chain…layers upon layers, each trying to take their cut of revenue as it passes from distributor, to distributor, to distributor, to… most people have no idea how many different companies are taking a cut while the farmers are squeezed. Not much different for content creators.

The problem isn’t that goods and services are expensive, it’s all the companies adding little or no value, or underpaying creators, just to maximize their own profits from the creations. YouTube sells ads, demonetizes the creators, but still run ads and keep all the revenue. Spotify just decides not to pay creators who don’t make enough while they sell ads that run before and after their music.

People are happy to pay toward the creation of content, otherwise Patreon, Twitch (I know…as bad as YT but at least a decent amount goes to the creator), and other “direct” (relatively) to creator sites wouldn’t exist.