Right now the current trend in the art market is to license your work out to companies that will put your work on stuff like souvenirs, magnets, greeting cards, calendars, etc. So actually that is adapting to the market, and that's what I've done.
Just to make sure, you're referring to visual arts here, right?
the reason I ask is it's a whole different animal from audio/video. First of all, as you said, people don't collect it. You have to make quality work and sell them to the few who want it at a high-ish(compared to the costs of audiovisual industry anyway) price to stay afloat. In the music business, the way to profit is selling a copy to every member of the population if you can manage it.
The current trend with audiovisual works seems to be you sign with a RIAA affiliate, giving them copyright over your work in the process. and they sell the product while giving you 2% of the cut. Then you pay them for permission to use your own work (since they now own the copyright) to go on concert tours where you stand a chance at actually making some money.
Who says this 5c site pays the artist only 2%? With such a low sale price, they can easily make 30 times the sales of $1 sites. Now, since the cost of maintaining a server and bandwidth is a flat rate, maximizing the number of sales means they get all their costs covered (esp since all they do is provide server space and manage finances), and the artist can easily get more money than they would from their local RIAA affiliate.
I looked into Russian copyright law a little bit and IANAL but AFAICT, Russia's law doesn't recognize the ability for someone to own a copyright other than the creator of the work while that creator still lives. So again, AFAICT, the reason that article from the New york times or whatever calls the legality of that site into question is because as far as Russia is concerned, the copyright holder is whoever created it, and not RIAA.
And you know what? I'm pretty sure no argument can be made on the basis of morality as to why RIAA isn't getting the money it needs to expand its C-level excecutives' paychecks is bad.
Also, I'm pretty sure Leonardo DaVinci died in poverty because he wasn't able to pay people to take his works off his hands, yet he still painted.
