I think this is actually the point. Sheeran was sued not because he made a song that sounded the same as another song, but because the song he made earned a lot of money.

So this problem only happens to rich musicians who have earned a lot of money making music. That doesn't make it right, or reasonable, obviously. But it also means that the vast majority of musicians will never have this problem. The whole "copyright is threatening music" headline is a little overblown. "Rich douchebags are using copyright to bully rich musicians with meritless court cases" would probably be more accurate.

I think your comment exposes more of the underlying point. Why are the courts letting these baseless claims through? If you become famous everyone suddenly comes out of the woodwork to make the argument that they want a piece of your pie. And as you get more popular, those claims just get more and more detailed and cover more absurd. That would be demoralizing to any artist, regardless of their popularity or success.

You are overestimating how much an indie artists earn of streaming.

Sportify, for example, is paying ~$0.003 / steam.

That r you used in sportify belongs in steam.

He was obviously making a very well considered and important contribution to the discussion and not at all dropping a variety of turds, both real and proverbial, whilst sitting on the can.

Perhaps they meant $70k in aggregate.

1M or so streams per month is still indie realm isn't it? And anyway, if it's less, that just makes the point harder: 'nobody is suing indie artists for the 70k they didn't make last year'.