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!

Even well-known artists don't make meaningful amounts of money off of Spotify if they're not currently topping the charts. Year before last, I think it was, "Weird Al" Yankovic announced that he had made enough off of Spotify that year to buy "a pretty nice sandwich".