You're calling for a "patron" model of the arts, in which artists collect a one time payment (from one or more individuals) in order to create new artwork.
That's fairly inefficient in several aspects, and by "inefficient," I mean that it's not likely to lead to artists creating the works that people want to consume.
First, this reduces the artist to only producing works that a single entity (person, company), or a small group of entities, wants to commission. If a thousand people each want a picture of a wasp $10-worth, that's very different from two sponsors each paying $5,000 for that image, and everyone else paying zero.
Second, it makes it nearly impossible for an artist to create work "on spec" and then collect payment on it later. Again, the artist is taking a ton of risk since he/she is looking for a massive payment from one or two patrons, vs. small payments from many consumers. Also, how is a photographer to advertise his or her work online, if anyone can just copy the image to their hard drive?
Third, it restricts authors to only extracting value from their art at the time of creation. If a photo becomes wildly popular a year or two after it was created and sold the first time, then the author can't get paid for it.
Fourth, as a potential patron who is a rational actor, I have a strong incentive to comb the Internet for a free photo before I pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to commission a new one. Won't this stifle the funding for creation of new works of art?
Hence, patreon. I hope eventually everyone is on there and I can start contributing more materially to the artists I love than via exposure and the occasional thing they sell.
That's fairly inefficient in several aspects, and by "inefficient," I mean that it's not likely to lead to artists creating the works that people want to consume.
First, this reduces the artist to only producing works that a single entity (person, company), or a small group of entities, wants to commission. If a thousand people each want a picture of a wasp $10-worth, that's very different from two sponsors each paying $5,000 for that image, and everyone else paying zero.
Second, it makes it nearly impossible for an artist to create work "on spec" and then collect payment on it later. Again, the artist is taking a ton of risk since he/she is looking for a massive payment from one or two patrons, vs. small payments from many consumers. Also, how is a photographer to advertise his or her work online, if anyone can just copy the image to their hard drive?
Third, it restricts authors to only extracting value from their art at the time of creation. If a photo becomes wildly popular a year or two after it was created and sold the first time, then the author can't get paid for it.
Fourth, as a potential patron who is a rational actor, I have a strong incentive to comb the Internet for a free photo before I pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to commission a new one. Won't this stifle the funding for creation of new works of art?