An Excellent New Read: "A Brief History Of Why Artists Are No Longer Making A Living..."

Actually, the author DOES support that analog is superior to digital- and that digital had to recreate itself through added warmth, etc.

I think his most salient point is now that the record label hierarchy has crumbled and that the under-30 generation feels no need to pay for music, that the idea of an artist being able to be a full-time professional has itself become an outdated schema. If that artist still adheres to physical media and traditional distribution.

Here's an interesting take on what artists get paid for each play on the streaming services.
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/01/16/streaming-music-services-pay-2018/
The most popular streaming service for Gen Z is Youtube, and to them the idea of buying a cd is just as archaic but not as hipster as vinyl. Like beer, music is now rented, not bought, and yet playlists are more esoteric for this generation than anything the Baby Boomers or Gen X had in their mixtapes.

Thank you whart and simao!This is all good to know.

Thank you both @whart and @simao Great posts and mostly either jibe with the article or what I may have already absorbed, but both your posts add greatly to the topic here and I'm grateful for your respective glimpses into your experiences. Thank you, it's good for me to hear these sorts of things from people with different backgrounds than mine. I have some heart for the current generation of musicians, but sometimes I wonder what the future holds as the roots of people who think music should be free continue to grow deeper.

@orpheus10 :  "First and foremost, this forum should stick to all things concerning turntable set up, or similar subject, because people here have no idea of what's going on outside of their on little "ballywick" meaning the big world outside of audio."

I hope that was meant in humor. First, there are plenty of folks here who know the music industry intimately. Second, you have no idea what other people's experiences have been.

"Has anyone noticed that almost all of the major cities in this country that were thriving metropolises not long ago are now urban slums." 

Not true. That is a regional problem. Cities throughout the southeast are growing at unprecedented (and sometimes alarming) rates and the local music scenes just keep getting better and better both in terms of creativity and success but also fan access.

@simao : " Actually, the author DOES support that analog is superior to digital- and that digital had to recreate itself through added warmth, etc."

That does not establish superiority. It establishes flexibility to meet tastes and marketability, which is its own form of superiority. I also don't buy the premise. I was there in the thick of the CD 'revolution'. While we often heard and read about the coldness and sterility of digital sound, all of the typical consumers around me loved it. I can't speak for serious audiophiles in general of that era (I was a minor audiophile at the time) but I had an uncle who reviewed music for major classical labels. I still remember his large listening room the whole rear wall of which was vinyl behind his Mac/Klipsch gear. I went back to his house a few years later and the whole wall was CDs.