Having a musical idea, and recording it, expressing it the way that you thought it... That required a lot of effort, from a lot of engineers, at a studio, with a lot of expensive equipment... As recently as the mid 90s.
Now we've got Jacob Collier, winning Grammys from his bedroom.
To assume you can live off streams today would be like a journalist thinking they could survive off of tweets 3 years ago. Getting well edited thoughts out to the masses via the press required a lot of effort from a lot of engineers, at a studio using lots of expensive equipment.