Well they do… But only barely and less so in the US lately.
There are still cases of small artists getting compensation for big business using their images or music without consent. But sadly it is far from the norm.
I agree with your core sentiment. Copyright is not working how it was intended and it is being abused by corporations.
It might be because I’m not American, or because I am a musician and songwriter myself. but I still see a point to having some laws protecting the rights of the creative mind behind something.
Removing copyright completely will only make it even more easy for the guys with the money and resources to exploit the small independent creators.
But (American) copyright is severely broken. This is true.
A starting point would be that the right is only tied to the specific creative(s) actually involved in the creation of something.
Virtual environments are really not viable for music production. Latency and other inconsistensies makes it a no-go.
High level Music production requires very low audio and input latency in addition to consistent and 100% accurate sound reproduction.
A virtual environment is a wildcard here that I at least would not bother trying to make work. (Not saying it can’t be done, just saying it would potentially be a big headache and extremely conditioned on spesific hardware, drivers and configuration settings.)