Making music free is definitely adding to the current problem of art (music/literature/illustration/etc) seemingly having absolutely no value. People don't want to pay for the hard work people put in to doing something they're good at (and often enjoy doing). Art is an abstract or intangible product. Buy a donut and you get a donut. Buy an album and what do you get? Something to listen to a few times and hope you still like it (or own it) in a couple of years? If it's a digital download it's not even something you can hold in your hands. It exists only as a small amount of memory allocation on a drive somewhere. Or worse, a scratched old CD-R on the floor of your car.
It takes a lot of effort to write an article or design a poster or write and record a song. Hard work. Like the hard work people get paid to do in a 9-5 job. I love making music. I love the feeling I get when I copy a finished wav file to a disc or flash drive and take it somewhere to listen to it. But making music is hard work - even if it is done by an "artist".