Brian

It is a fact that I don't how a lot of things work. I'm a bystander, standing afar to pretty much everything. I couldn't even change the tires on my motorcycles.
And I don't know how the music business works.

But I've been my own employer for most of my life and I know something about human nature, particularly at a level of business society where there is little oversight and people are governed, or not by their internal moral codes.

So what we MAY can very much agree on is that people are generally corrupt. It's to be expected.
As Chris Rock quipped once, "a man is as faithful as his options."

Read "The Prince" by Machiavelli
Any Shakespeare
Homer
The Bible

That will get you back to the Bronze Age.
If you want a real good laugh, read "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelias where he discusses the people that he will meet with that day.
They say that an American President is the most powerful man on earth. If you look at Meditations, keep in mind that POTUS power is nothing akin to the life and death power that a Roman Emperor had...and this is how he looked forward to the day.

"When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own — not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine.

The scenery changes but human corruptibility is as constant as a blue sky on a clear day at noon.

I suspect you agree that the real golden rule is the man who has the gold makes the rules. (And maybe he pays the army too.)
Its true for sure that the big players in all industries are going to purchase influence and get things done their way.

The bad thing that I have seen over and over in my life, almost without fail...if the people most agitated by being left out of the power pay-offs ever achieve the power, they do the same things when they get it.

AOC and Bernie for starters. They interviewed a young woman who worked the bar with AOC. She said that AOC, the socialist, hogged the tip jar. Now AOC is driving expensive cars, attending GALAs and carrying expensive purses...and promoting neo-socialist economic equality. And she is the top polling democrat as I understand it.

None of that is any accusation of you. I don't know you. Just making general statements.

I have several songs copyrighted. I think that it was a waste of money. So I qualify as a bonafide member of the 1% left-out masses.
At some point, c'est la vie.

Marty

https://soundcloud.com/sunset-poet-of-texas