When I am making creative short movies I use music. This is very common and pretty normal. But not all the music I’d like to put in the movies is legally possible.
In order for me to use current songs I need to pay. I get that but it an absurd amount of money. So I search for royalty free music or creative commons in music.
Think about it as an artist, would you rather earn 50,000 dollars at ones or 1 million times 0,50 cents over a longer period. Try to remember, there are a few billion on this planet. So reaching a million isn’t that hard. If there would be a library of music were everything was available under a price of 1 dollar, music artists would not be poor.
Don’t think short-term, think long-term. If you make great music, pictures (something that can be sold digitally) or something else and people download it a lot, it should be a sign to artist that he or she is doing a fantastic job.