Part of the issue is that yeah sure, the music industry is full of fat cats, arrogance, connections and dumb luck, but there is a pathway for small artists to get noticed and slowly build up a career, gain an audience, connect with fans at local shows, and just having fun with your band without huge expectations.

Like Adam says with Youtube those fat cats are instead the algorithms. The issue is that the algorithms are like a treadmill that systematically keeps speeding up, lowering payouts, reducing exposure and raising roadblocks unless you follow an ever-increasing amount of rules. People starting out there are at even more of disadvantage to begin with.

All so that Google and other tech platforms can extract more money out of people. We need a Fediverse music sharing service or something.