Nah, it existed when barrier to entry was much, much higher. What causes it is the fact that with recording and copying technology, creative work scales extreme

Nah, it existed when barrier to entry was much, much higher. What causes it is the fact that with recording and copying technology, creative work scales extremely well, especially with positive feedback effects of popularity and marketing. This is what creates the very small number of very high earners. If anything, the lower barriers to entry (especially with regards to being able to distribute your work) have flattened the curve a little bit, as the long tail of obscure artists is longer and thicker than ever (and the shape is the same: each obscure genre/subculture has a few artists doing very compared to the others, though it also flattens off once you're looking at artists who primarily make money from commission work, as that doesn't scale nearly as much).