They wouldn't exist in the way they do now. It would be different. They existed before intellectual property. There are other models.
You've been conditioned to believe the current model is the only one that works. I'd argue that this is, in large part, because a bunch of interests who aren't "creators" profit from this current regime.
I fully agree, but the vision is not practical unless you want to change the entire economy around the shift.
Yes, artists existed before IP but they also existed before the internet and digital works. Prior to the internet, creative works met real material limits and real scarcity due to the limitations of physical media. In the digital age, these limits are obliterated. You then have two options:
1. You instate something like IP to make digital markets roughly (and admittedly arbitrarily) like real material markets. 2. You establish no such system. No property rights exist in digital space.
I am a major fan of (2) myself, but history gave us (1). At this stage, too many people make a living off digital markets for us to just impose a radical shift—you're taking about reworking the entire global economy here. Without concomitant shifts toward socialism globally this would probably just result in digital space becoming sparse and people adopting "analog only" release models to try and sustain incomes off of creative work.
If you want to abolish IP, go the full mile and abolish the principle of property period. The distinction between IP and physical goods is just an accidental feature of digital technology. If you are against the idea of IP you are against property. Period. And I'm in full agreement, but I also don't think it's easy to achieve this at this historical juncture. Go read Proudhon.