Dude you are so wrong from so many angles I am astounded. Guess what, I oversee my dad’s publishing, streaming and old label contracts. I see the numbers with a legendary artist (who was totally in the worst of the bad deals you keep preaching about). The amount made from the records pre-streaming was 100x. Now it has dropped to a flatline that maybe increases a little here or there but it’s a major cut out. I also see the numbers for a mid-low level artist (me) who only has about 300k monthly listeners. I havent made any money from streaming since it started. I also see the numbers for several artists who are at the starting line. I also experienced a record deal with an advance pre and post streaming. Right now the predatory actions are 1000000000x as bad. People will take your publishing, or half of your record to front recording costs. Guess what. It takes 100x longer to recoup. When I did my universal deal with a boutique label (universal south) I was given a 120k advance and my record with Dave Cobb cost about 30k. I was in the hole for 150k right out of the gate. Our CD dropped and we sold 50k albums in a few weeks if you need me to do the math for you I can but that’s more than half a million dollars in sales of CDs. I was recouped with a few weeks and making about $1 on each CD I sold. We sold 75k more total in the next year. The success of the sales of that albums paid for our next two albums and gave me a solid quarterly check that covered my rent at my apartment and my living expenses plus some. You are conflating the structure of the entire record business with the streaming platform as if one thing is a replacement for the other. The predatory actions of the music business continue in its original form. They realized that there isn’t any money in music sales now so they all opened publishing companies and they use that to trap artists into advances. Managers also realize this and started publishing companies. I made 100x the money pre streaming from record sales at least. Maybe 1000x. We were able to fund our tour off the money we made from record sales. The two pieces worked together to elevate the artist. I value what you are saying but you are just wrong. I don’t see any experiential arguments here. I see you defending a toxic predatory plundering system with numbers that you are gaslighting people into thinking are even in the same universe of what we are talking about. Waylon made 50x more money before Shooter made 100x more money before Hip Hop and Punk Rock made their way by selling CDs and tapes out of a trunk at shows and turned around to make a cd to put out there. A lot of these guys built up money to record by touring first and grabbing peoples attention. That model can work now, but everybody knows you don’t make money on selling music anymore and they’ve accepted that. That’s oppression and that’s removal of rights in my opinion. The key to freedom is in our hands. A lot of artists are dropping off because they are getting falsely accusers of botting listens (they don’t they’re broke and have a regular job) and there’s no people that can handle these problems for the 100k+ a day being uploaded. It’s a techno terror organization in my mind (Spotify in particular because you kill Spotify they’ll all follow). They took music and turned it into a worthless commodity. Only in one generation do all the kids now believe all music is free. How about YouTube? Do you have any idea how many Waylon albums have been uploaded to YouTube that don’t get taken down and don’t generate any income for the estate? Thousands a year maybe more. Especially vinyl rips that don’t get picked up or of b sides etc etc. The entire ecosystem is broken