The only thing I don't like about this situation is that there appears to be no settlement for the thousands (tens, hundreds?) of indie artists, labels, writers and publishers whose music was on the site.
10% revenue loss for an indie label or publisher has a far greater impact on their viability than 10% loss to <insert major label here>.
We pay out tens of thousands of US$ to artists, writers and labels every month.
People do and are making a living in all of these professions, but yes it is hard.
Not sure where all this vitriol comes from?
The difference with development is that no-one questions the business model. You code and get paid for it while music is a completely different story. Before I became a professional developer I coded for fun and was happy with that. If the market would be like music (where 99% of artists cannot make a living out of it) then yes, I would say exactly that.
You say "no-one questions the business model" which is clearly false. Have you never heard of a developer being asked to work for free (or equity) on someone else's idea? IMHO that's the same as you saying musicians should be grateful to earn any money from their work.
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