Art:
Also, quality can be subjective as well like art. Agreed that Steem serves as a safe space like you said. So, I archive my work here as a way to keep backups online. That is a priceless feature. I would add a donate button on posts to allow people to send their favorite artists some tips, some money, and not just an upvote button.
Steem Upvote Add-ons
I would also encourage people to develop Steem apps and specifically add-ons which can offer different upvoting systems that do not depend completely on the Steem pool or even at all.
Decentralize Pool Systems
I would seek to decentralize pool systems as opposed to only being limited to the centralized upvote pool and also the downvote pool of the Steem blockchain. For example, Busy.org could have an independent pool system that could be added through a web browser add-on or some other method. That would add increase competition in the money systems or pool systems that could simply incentivize innovation in all of that. And it seeks to minimize cartels and especially monopolies which could plague pool systems.
You have some nice ideas.
You might not know this, but Steem doesn't actually protect your artwork. Images and Audio are not immutably recorded by the blockchain, they are stored on private servers. Only the text can actually be censorship resistant on Steem.
That said, your posts cannot be deleted by someone else, so even if the artwork is not actually stored on the blockchain, nobody can ever delete your posts that direct people to that artwork. :)
Yeah, I've heard about that. Is IPFS the best way to store images, video, etc?
Yep.