Aware of my flair for the obvious, I can unequivocally state that this music business is hard. It always has been, but with the advent of the digital explosion it has gotten even harder. In fact, it has tilted the table in a wholly different direction. The proliferation of the internet, together with the ubiquity of the home studio has created a tsunami that has swamped the former business model.
Everybody has the ability to create a recording studio in their home; albeit the technical expertise to run it covers the whole spectrum.
This has caused the depletion of clients for most of the regional and local recording studios. Even the larger ones have become training centers for the home studio, teaching proper recording technique. It seems that only the most premier houses are able to fill their schedules to keep in pure full-time music production operations.
Commercial broadcast radio has been decimated.
The CD has even going the way of the dinosaur, with the introduction of subscription streaming services. You ask an average 12 year old these days what a CD is – they have no idea, except the more enterprising might respond, “You mean Certificate of Deposit.”
The middling ground of mp3 sales has waned, as well. They limply served the transition from our normal method of buying “records” or “tapes,” “singles” or “albums,” prior to music streaming. The mp3 files also seem to have gone by the wayside. It seems that true audiophiles are the only surviving bastion of the vinyl sect. And too, there are folks who, either because of the arcane complement of equipment they still use or because they are just niche collectors, still have an interest in vinyl, cassettes, reel-to-reel, 8-tracks, 4-tracks (yes, there is such a thing…the predecessor to the 8-track), and CDs. Some even collect wire-recordings from the 1920s and 1930s. And the same goes for iPods and their ilk, as well.
But by and large, music is still being pirated, ripped and shared with their peers, or releases are listened to on a subscription streaming service. The musicians earn nothing from the pirated music, and only crumbs from the streaming services.