This isn't so for every kind of music. Folk musicians, who mainly play small venues and even house concerts, would make $100 to $300 per show from selling CDs.

This isn't so for every kind of music. Folk musicians, who mainly play small venues and even house concerts, would make $100 to $300 per show from selling CDs. The merch table at a Jazz club would mostly sell CDs and depending on the size of the club could pull in $500 or more in CD sales. Small classical groups like quartets and chamber music would play salons and again, CDs would be a big factor. This income would often double or more the artist's take from door sales (if any) and make the gigs viable at all. There used to be space for these musicians to eke out a modest but sustainable living touring a circuit of these types of gigs and festivals, but streaming really has killed most of it off. They could record a CD for a few thousand dollars and print maybe 5,000 copies, knowing that would turn into $50,000 - $75,000 of revenue at $10 to $15 per CD that they would mostly keep. But the crowd just don't buy CDs at anything near the rate that they used to. Now most of those musicians make most of their living by some other means and the music has become the side. It's very unfortunate.