Not to anyone who's watched it become axiomatic that musicians who expect to make money from their work are talentless hacks who should be pleased to work for f

Not to anyone who's watched it become axiomatic that musicians who expect to make money from their work are talentless hacks who should be pleased to work for free... Musicians today have a much lower barrier to entry in making sure they earn money from their works, as they no longer need to sign in to contracts with record labels, but can sell and earn higher percentages as independents without the distribution costs and various IP terms that old school labels would have required from them - modulo the fees of payment processing and/or using a storefront service, of course. It has always been the case that the bulk of a musician's profits come from live performances. But where back in the day one had to make the choice to be entrenched in the exclusiveness of labels, today you are free from that burden and the higher market saturation naturally leads to lower individual chances of huge successes. But you can still make some money from recordings. Whereas before, the only thing you could hope for was earning a cult following off of tape trading or whatnot. Obviously without any financial compensation - the dime's entirely on you.