> 99% of commercial profits come from the first 5 years after any piece of media gets published - book, music, film, artwork, etc.

Many songs make far more profits when they are featured in popular movies or TV shows decades or more after their first publication than they do in their first 5 years.

It is also not uncommon for songs released before a future big star becomes a big star to make much money (or even lose money), but when they become big people their early work sells.

> Many songs make far more profits when they are featured in popular movies or TV shows decades or more after their first publication than they do in their first 5 years.

Pop culture has to contend with two things that strongly work against its broad memetic power: social media bubbles, and the ease at which someone can scroll or flick up and not give even 1 full second of attention to something they are not immediately in the mood for.

Social media companies make billions per year, they aren't going anywhere. So nothing's going to change any time soon.

So this means trends don't stick the way they used to. The 10 or 20 year pop-culture nostalgia cycle isn't going to be a thing in the next generation.

I think the point is that copyright should not be exclusively about publisher's profits from big stars.

> Many songs make far more profits when they are featured in popular movies or TV shows decades or more after their first publication than they do in their first 5 years.

Oh common. There are few songs like that. Not nearly "many". You are talking about super small subset of songs and humans profiting from these ... and the profiting humans are not even necessary the artists who created these.