I history commercialisation of intellectual property is a recent invention. Prior to the invention of recording and distribution media living musicians would have to perform to make an income. Not too much earlier there wasn't even an opportunity to make a buck from sheet music. With digital distribution one may just as well see it as a return to basics through sharing, as theft. Societies are still struggling to make up their opinion on which definition to support. The recording industry has a lot of influence through their wealth, but it is far from clear that the industry's bare existence is to the best of society.
In those times that you're talking about without a recording industry, people would support artists through different means. They would be patronised by kings, audiences would come to their concerts, they'd be invited to perform on a grand scale and the pay would be enough for them to sustain their living.
The benefit of the recording industry has been to proliferate music throughout the world, not just in concert halls in Vienna and Prague. And for a long time, the recording industry actually cared about artists, look at the stories about Led Zep and their chartered Boeing to fly from big city hotels to concert venues and back all in the same night. The Beatles. Dire Straits. The Rolling Stones. Black Sabbath. Metallica.
The real power of the recording industry is not their ability to record music. It is in their distribution networks and their ability to get songs and artists airplay and exposure. We don't hear about the good stuff because the good stuff has been buried under what the record industry *THINKS* you want to hear, based on CD sales. But CD sales cease to be a relevant indicator if the an artists' work is pirated in thousands of copies, enough to have made their record gold or platinum.
And for the record, it would be great to be part of a community that appreciates and supports music. But if the artist is not a willing part of the community, it just becomes a different form of communism sweeping through capitalist nations. Because the one thing capitalists believe in more than enterprise is free goods. And that's by hook or by crook. And so we have the marriage of capitalism and communism in the modern world. Taking from the smaller number because they do not have the strength to fight back.