Radio stations in the US don't have to pay artists for playing their works for money

That's false. ASCAP/BMI/SESAC is there so stations are obligated to pay artists for use of their work. Radio stations are supposed to submit playlists to them to calculate mechanical royalties.

There is a lot of fuckery afoot and these rules aren't enforced, but stations are supposed to pay artists for their work when they use it

I’m not one to defend giant media conglomerates, but to compare radio broadcasts - which are not on-demand for the consumer - to downloaded content (which is) is kind of silly. People also tend to listen to a song/album repeatedly and thus want to own it and have it on hand. Most people who watch a show as long as GoT don’t watch it again.

Most people don’t rewatch movies or shows like they do with music. And how often do people, who want to rewatch a show, actually buy the dvd or BluRay once they’ve seen it trough a pirated source that still sits on their hard drive?

Also artists do get paid when a song gets played on the radio. It’s called radio royalties, though only the people that have writing credits get paid.

Here is an article that talks about how artists get paid for radio play. Not sure why you'd think they do not. The basics are:

1. Radio acquires a blanket license(s) from its local PRO(s)
2. A song is played on a radio, and the airplay is reported to a PRO
3. The PRO distributes royalties and songwriter gets paid
   The songwriter is paid the royalties due