Well, I'd like to start with an initial point: when you create something as an artwork, you shouldn't be doing it with the motivation of income; if such a bonus does come, then congratulations, you've got an extra source of income, but don't forget that when you make music, paint paintings, draw drawings or the like, you do it to express yourself, and to share that expression with the world, which shouldn't be done with any sort of ulterior motive aside from the love of doing it.
Do you think I look for money or popularity when I write posts on my blog? If so, far from it; I share this with no cost to me, and with no gain for me, aside from the knowledge that someone somewhere out there is enjoying the act of reading my work as much as I enjoy writing it.
Those huge corporate megalomaniacs out for nothing but an insane amount of cash in their pockets who copyright something as quizzical as the 'Happy Birthday' song should be resisted with as much force as an entire community of artists can muster. That's not to say that original artists shouldn't get credit for their work, it's to say that they shouldn't be awarded 5 cents every time someone uses their work in a separate piece of art.
When DJ's mix a number of different songs practically past the point of them being individually recognizable, then it should be considered an entirely separate piece of art without any credit needing to be given to the original artists. Why? Because as I see it, theirs a point in which the instrumental sounds in a recording become nothing but the sounds of individual instruments, chopped to bits and mashed into a single, brand-new entity by another external artist, in which they can be considered nothing but the sound of a guitar being played, as opposed to a guitar being played in a certain style by someone such as Bob Dylan or Michael Franti, which makes it, by default, the original work of the external artist.
On the other hand, however, if the entirety (or even a chunk) of a song is played with only very slight modifications made by an external artist with the song still being recognizable as the original, then the original artist should get credit, but should by no means gain any profit out of the use of the song aside from the satisfaction being felt in recognizing that someone thinks the music is good enough to be used to make a modified version of the masterpiece.
As a parallel issue to artists who make art only for individual profit, theirs the fact that most of the money made by the work of art doesn't even go to the artist themselves, it goes to the corporation or organization that distributes the work. For example: if a band makes an album which is sold for $12 per CD, the band would receive only $5 dollars per album sold, and in most cases, theirs about 4 or 5, sometimes 6 members in a band, which averages out to about a dollar to each band member per every album sold, while the rest goes directly to the company which is distributing.
That's not to say that the distribution company shouldn't gain any profit for the job of distributing the work, it's to say that they shouldn't gain as much as they do; at least not the majority of the profit. I think the artist(s) should receive a majority of the money made, if any at all, which once again ties in with the idea that they should be doing it for the privileged ability to share their work with the world as opposed to doing it for profit.
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