> I do agree that youtube has made it much easier to self-promote

And Spotify. And Apple Music, to an extent. And even SoundCloud.

> They helped struggling musicians survive, giving them a chance to make it,

Survivorship bias. You're completely ignoring the artists that never got the attention of distributors, or got immediately dropped, or dropped after the first disappointing (by studio standards) sales, or screwed out of revenue and royalties, or...

Or those who never got a chance at all because Sony or Warner paid radio stations to promote who they wanted to promote: https://www.npr.org/2005/11/23/5024411/warner-agrees-to-sett...

> Labels still do this today, but it's just the number of opportunities for musicians is smaller.

Labels still do this to the same extent as before. They spend about as much money and, percentage wise, keep as much money as before. It's even easier for them because a whole layer of physically printing and distributing media (tapes and CDs) is gone.

And the number of opportunities for artists increased, but became more complex.

In 2012 an otherwise unknown outside South Korea artist reached a billion views on Youtube resulting in worldwide tours. Now there are millions of unknowns on the same platforms. It's never been easier to promote your art, and it's never been more complex because there are so many others.

Don't disagree, but am realizing, it's easy to say anything (on my side too) without any proof either way. Yeah, have to admit, don't have any numbers on the total number of artist that are supported by music labels, or the total amount of money they give out. The only numbers I have are that the music industry's revenue crashed in the 2000's, down to nearly half, and only recently has it recovered and is near what it was it its peak in the 90's (but this is without inflation). To me at least, this means the amount of money in the industry has to give out is much lower.

Although yeah, you do have a point that it doesn't take as much money to distribute music. That is definitely a cost savings for musicians and labels (and, as you probably know, DAW's and relatively cheap, high-quality recording equipment have been huge too). Still, not sure how big an effect these are though.

And for me, yeah, can't have surviorship bias, because I've been struggling myself for years to make a living, haha :) But part of it is my fault, am trying to be a composer, and this is one of the worst jobs in the music industry to make money in.

But yeah, do agree that it's well known that labels have screwed over tons of musicians over the past 100 years. Still, at the same time, it's probably a bell curve in terms of those that get screwed vs those that are supported and nurtured. And to me at least, the more money in the system, the more opportunities for good labels to support musicians.