I agree.

One thing that people seem to also forget is the law of supply and demand. Yes, I can understand a band like that ***** about the situation, sure...but, one has to also realize the sheer number of offerings out there.

When I was a kid...well there was literally a handful of bands to dig in a given genre.

These days...go online, or even scan the local training facilities and such...there's a gazillion of bands in any given genre.

And not only that, some of them are really very very good, and quite often even better than these mainstream bands that ***** about not making it financially.
There are likely millions of hobby players out there, and a huge number of them can actually equal or even top the playing skills of a whole bunch of well-known artists.

Don't mean to sound arrogant or anything, but even I am quite sure I'm much better a guitarist and singer than a whole bunch of people out there in bands doing it professionally. (Of course there are hordes of them much better than me too, but you know what I mean).

When there is such an excess of supply of quality music...there can be nothing more than lack of demand for all of that. Basic laws of business.

I can also understand it seems insanely low to get like $50 for hundreds of thousands of listens...but, that should change when there are more subscribers...hopefully...and, then again, how much would YOU personally be _willing_ to pay for listening to music on such a service?

I can tell you I would NOT want to pay much more than the $10 a month I do...I listen to maybe 50 songs for that money per month at max, albeit I do sometimes just leave it on and playing background music...but even that comes to 20c per song I actively listen. I think that's more than fair amount I pay for my listening to it.