Historically in the record business (as in, since the birth of the record business up until about 2000) artists had almost no hope of ever making any money. Pla

Historically in the record business (as in, since the birth of the record business up until about 2000) artists had almost no hope of ever making any money. Playing live gigs or putting out an album usually involved going into massive debt with a record company just to play a few shows or have a small demo release. The artists you ever saw in a record store, on the Billboard TopN, or playing big live shows are the vast, vast minority. Countless artists just as talented never got that break, which was decided at the whim of record execs. A certain number of artists would be propped up for a period of time, and if some fell out of favor, they would be cut away and replaced from the endless supply of new ones doing anything they can to break in. There was a maximum number of acts that a record company would support at once, since that was the optimum number they had calculated for making profits; there was so much money being spent on things like marketing, advertisement campaigns, award ceremonies, etc and it you could generate more money by selectively picking just a few dozen artists to be "allowed" to be famous and marketing them like crazy. The music industry is hugely, hugely better for actual artists today. You don't have to sign your house, car and life away to release music to people.