Go Buy Some Music You Deadbeat Streamers!

@big_greg. Exactly. Streaming leads to physical (vinyl) purchase for me. And I can't remember the last time I bought a cd. I do stream tons, though. And go to a ton of live shows.

Sorry to report, streaming is now essentially the only way I seek out new material.  Whatever tiny royalty the players or composers now get from my streams will have to do.  At least it's something.  You got to remember, too, that buying used vinyl doesn't give an artist a penny.  When I put one of my already-bought CDs or records on, they don't get a penny, either. We're once again in the old days, where musical artists have to be paid studio time or perform at venues to make a decent living.  The era when a musician could sit in their house in Laurel Canyon and just wait for a check to arrive in the mail (and I knew many of them), is largely a thing of the past.  You also have to shed a tear for the musical infrastructure, such as the managers & accountants, that kept track of the flow of cash.  Ah, the good old days of resids!

Streaming is the door to new music to discover that I could not possibly afford to do if I was limited to buying new records or CDs.
Yes that's the way it always used to be done and how many of us ended up with an album that sucked apart from one track! I know I can't be on my own.
It's a brave new world out there with a lot of things gone but that's called progress.
We don't all want to drive that Ford Pinto too do we?

As noted, today you have to release an album to promote your tour, that is how artists make money. I feel like that has narrowed the artist choices available to us, and also has narrowed the complexity of the music available to us, certainly for more "popular" music.

I think growing up, all the local bands that sort of defined our lives, could release an album and sell enough to put food on their tables and a roof over their head, and keep crafting new music. Maybe they only released 2 or 3 albums, but often those albums hold a special spot for us, and we would go see them on the local tour that was not overly expensive. My "kids" would have a hard time identifying more than a 1 or 2 local artists who have not reached some level of international recognition.

One of the reasons a lot of the later Beatle's music is interesting is they decided to stop touring, and concentrated on creating music unconstrained by the limits of an eventual live performance. That is not possible today, though today, it would probably be acceptable  to play mix a live performance mixed with recorded material, but personally I don't really see the point, especially at the cost of a concert today.

I do stream as well as buy new and used CD and Vinyl.

I did go to a lot of concerts but Covid has killed that.