The music industry is so fickle

With streaming and all of the various technology and sites it seems that touring is the main way to earn for music acts now.

I can’t even recall the last music I bought in a store. That whole business changed.

Look up pop singer Kesha. She has over 200 officially unreleased songs ranging from hard rock to punk that she was not allowed to release due to her record label. This is why you gotta be careful what contract you sign as the record people control your career.

System Of A Down wrote a song about this issue called 'Lost In Hollywood'.

The music industry is a horror show now. I feel sorry for most musicians/singers. Their music is illegally downloaded and commercial radio is DOA.

They don't have ANY control over their careers. Are you kidding? Things couldn't be any worse right now for musicians.

There are no more venues for new artists to break out or for older artists to remain relevant. For example, in the early 1990s, when there was a real danger of 1960s artists becoming irrelevant, there was stuff like MTV Unplugged, where they were invited to do acoustic versions of their music. There's nothing like that at all anymore.

No one listens to radio, which used to have a "golden oldies" format.

All the various forms of distribution have died out and become taken over by evil companies like Amazon, Spotify, Apple, etc. Amazon sucks so bad that if you hear of a new act and want to be redirected, you're forced AWAY from previewing their album into artists that it's chosen for you.

Things are so bad that artists who were huge 20 years ago, even 10 years ago, have become obscure in their own time. That's never happened before.

It used to be that a band or artist was allowed some room to build their career, usually making it big by the third or so album. In the last 20-30 years it seems new artists just appear out of nowhere and go to the top of the charts, have it good for a couple of years and are then relegated to the back so other new artists can have their moment.

Social Media and the Internet have also diversified the market so you no longer have mega millions of people listening to the same bands, it is spread out over a lot more bands who have found an audience online. Which is good of course as it gives more people a chance but also increases competition for a smaller slice of the market.

Not to mention most people have realized modern music sucks and rock music that was popular in the past is still King now.

I've been reading a lot of musician biographies from the 70s, and yes, they keep trying to squeeze singles "so that they buy the album" and know that SO many bands either go out of favor quickly, break up, die, etc., so they try to squeeze every penny because of their investment.