Except for a few big artists, it never was really paying to sell albums. In the 90s, out of a 20$ cd, the artists would only get around 15% of it. The store, distributer and label took the largest part Concert have always been much more paying because of the share from the tickets and the fact that you basically can take all the profits from the merch. Now with most of the streaming platforms and the way they share revenus within pools of artists, it's basically impossible to make a living from selling music, except for 1% that are pushed by labels. Meanwhhile fucking Spotify can give 100$ millions to Douche Rogan and buy the FC Barcelona. Capitalism has won the brainwashing war. I teach music in college amd University and pretty much all of the kids have never bought an actual album and dont see any problem with the current revenue models. Imagine what we could do if we simply ditch Spotify for an user controlled platform.