You're right. I presented a very rosy picture. There are challenges that the online universe poses and I'm sure you will hear about many of them in the course of your study.
One of the most vexing challenges has been that of digital piracy. There are no easy answers to digital piracy. The fact is that it is certainly something that creative communities have struggled with and that online service providers like Google have tried to find ways to assist artists in coping with. For example, on YouTube we have one of the best anti-piracy programs in the world in our content ID system to help identify alleged copyright-infringing content and either take it down off YouTube or monetize it.
This is the other part of the answer to your question, which is that I think the other challenge for artists is to put themselves in the mindset of taking advantage of all of the opportunities available to them in the new media. To the extent that they're focused only on the mindsets that the previous regulatory system encouraged, whether it's the subsidy and quota model or one particular form of distribution, one of the biggest challenges is opening up to the possibilities of distribution and opportunity in the world of online media.