Yea but you're still looking at this from "love of the art", "lets support as much music as we can" point of view. Which I admire and appreciate.
Unfortunately, the industry is now more fickle. Artists have to make their own way. Trust me, I come from an EDM production background and nowadays in EDM, your "demo" better be ready to play on the radio as is when you send it to the label or unless you're sitting on some unreal track that is a sure fire hit with the right support, you can forget about it getting anything more than "needs more work" from the label (if you're really lucky, probably just get ignored). That means every kid who starts messing around with music these days will most likely also have to learn the production side of things. No one is forcing them to pursue a career in music. If they don't want to or can't learn the production side of the business then there is a whole landscape of "real" jobs they can look into.
I don't disagree that it sucks that the music industry is going this way but it's just the way it's evolving. Artists need to do more than just impress an A&R guy at a club. They need to promote and make themselves visible and produce a damn fine demo to make themselves appealing to a record label. It just means more work on their behalf and that less of them will make the cut. Hey, wouldn't we all like to be CEO's?
I wouldn't act like it's impossible to make it these days. If anything I think it's better this way. Nowadays it's us, the people, who decide who gets the spotlight, instead of 4 or 5 guys from a label sitting around a table deciding who gets the backing. I can't speak for all genres, but the music I listened to is almost exclusively promoted by blogs, youtube channels, facebook shares and sites like Hypem and Soundcloud. I freaking love it. I think if you want to see how "making it" in the music industry today works, you can look at acts like "Kygo" and "The Chainsmokers". Kygo started out as a kid making remixes of songs, just like a million other people out there, but he had a unique sound, nothing else really sounded like him in the dance music world and the people took notice. Sure, he had to put in the leg work, get his remixes radio-ready, promote them himself and there are probably a lot of quality musicians lost at this stage of the game, but Kygo was able to get his work out to some blogs who started sharing his music, all of the sudden he starts rising up the Hypem charts, his facebook and soundcloud build up millions of views and the record labels then start to take notice. The guy was able to get a major label deal and a world tour from just his remix work. Don't get me wrong, his sound is unique and it came at the perfect time but he's proof that the musicians that have the talent AND the desire and smarts, can still make it today.
I guess that might be hard for the strung-out "sunset strip" bands of today (if they exist) but hey, adapt or die. The industry has changed.
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