Some two decades of involvement in the music industry has done little to dull my amazement at how the person who creates the actual product for sale — the musician — is the lowest person on the food chain. Musicians get paid last and least, their cut far less than that of the retailer or the distributor handling their CDs, never mind the label.
And if you think that downloads are an improvement, think again. Less than half of the 99 cents of an iTunes MP3 makes it back to the label, and you can be sure the artist will only be getting about 15 cents from that. Why not cut out the middlemen, you ask? Sorry, iTunes won't let you. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
All this has served to raise my awareness of how true this is in nearly every industry: People who actually make something are exploited mercilessly by the people who do the distribution, marketing and branding. These middlemen tend to be more consolidated, and the producers more disparate, which only exacerbates the problem.