I think a lot has happened since the 90's, and you rightfully point out that there was very little money in music to begin with. Labels generally always took a very large fraction of a physical CD sale, for example, so the model was rather rigged from the beginning (and recorded music doesn't have that long of a history, anyway).

In general, I'd argue that Spotify will be more toxic to the industry (or the artists' livelihood) than piracy. Streaming is even more predatory and centralized than labels in the 90's, but with an important caveat: it's legal. When people engage in piracy there is at least some awareness of, say, the pirate being at fault in the transaction — even though, as someone else already mentioned, people who pirate might contribute, or engage in other ways, with the creators. But with streaming, it got normalized to pay artists a fraction of a cent per stream (and the terms get progressively worse). I've countless times heard the argument "at least they get paid something!"

Bandcamp, for example, seems like a much fairer ideal for the industry. Luckily, the Epic buyout a few years ago did not immediately ruin the business.

As for the music in the 90's...music has changed. Naturally, one could argue that these are also exciting times: one can singlehandedly produce a record, distribute it independently, and be touring all over Europe without ever having to sign off to a major label. Is this not a good thing — or at least, a notable one? Of course, there's still great music around.

Yeah, usually, have also read that the only ones to make music on Spotify are major artists. They take a huge chunk of the the money distributed to musicians. At least for me, have never heard of any musician making a living off of their Spotify sales, not even close.

And Bandcamp does seem nice, wish it took off more.

And yes, I do completely agree with you that there are some big positives with today's music landscape. The rise of Digital Audio Workstations (DAW) to create your own music was a revolution, as is youtube for getting your music to the masses. Seems like a ton of musicians got their break from this these days... ...So as we talk, am thinking, maybe piracy has become a unimportant aspect of the music industry?? Hmm... Well, one aspect is missing, the seasoned engineers, producers, marketers and managers who can get your music created, promoted and performed all without the musician's needing to learn all this themselves. It really is a lot of work!