I am one of those underdog artists. Copyright protection is literally the only leverage point I have available in any sort of business negotiation. They don't typically give out subsidies or tax breaks for films with a sub-$1 million budget. And while I don't argue for the sort of extreme copyright terms we have now such as 95 years, I do want robust copyright protection at minimal registration cost because it creates a level economic playing field for creative people who do original work.
I am a musician as well. I don't make money out of it, and I understand how hard it is to make money in arts.
The question is, should these sorts of economic incentives exist, and to what scale, given their downsides? Any incentive will drive people into playing the game and optimizing their take, driving the global legislation problems we are currently facing.
Art has always been a poor man's game throughout human history. I think the age we live in now is an anomaly with respect to personal arts and IP-based commercial funding. Historical economic success I can think of would be found in notable performance artists, instrument manufacturers, conservatory instructors, and patronage. None of these are really IP related, but personal skill related and involved in the trade of tangible goods & services found from a particular individual or group, regardless of their ability to be copied.
I certainly don't favor 95 year copyright terms of the Disney variety, or even life + 70 for authors - more like 35-50 for collective/corporate works and life terms for authors, or maybe some combination of the two, although that would be tricky to administrate.
I also think that there should be a few different levels of licensing (much like the Creative Commons approach) and possibly some sort of price controls for licensing, to be reflective of the fixed pricing for copyright registration that currently obtains. In general I'm against price controls, though, and going down that route could lead to mandatory licensing which would also be undesirable (eg you find your passionate song about freedom used in a political campaign commercial by a candidate whose values you find repellent, and can do nothing about it because anybody has the right to unilaterally license anything).
Other people have proposed increasing copyright renewal fees over time, or renewal fees that were somehow keyed to the economic performance of a copyrighted work, though I think both these approaches are problematic.
