Artists are on a gift-based economy. They gain status by giving away works. If you are the best artist in the world but don’t make an effort to share your works, you are irrelevant. The more they give away the more they are recognised. Even if they give them away via pirated works. See: movies, songs that everybody knows and resonates with. Status is their currency, not money.

The status then allows them to obtain more money than other people, incidentally.

CEOs are on a market-based economy, they sell goods and services for money. They don’t sell their status. The goods and services they sell are not theirs, but created with the stolen sweat, blood and lives of the people that work for them, which get a minuscule share of the profit for the amount of life they put onto it.

In gift-based economies such as the ones of artists, open source developers, fashion, cultures without scarcities of the specific resource that makes the economy (such as small plentiful tropical tribes, communes, etc), the status is the currency.