I do think there's a missing ground that is being lost - it was incidental to the publishers but they would provide production, editors, other various things that are seen as "not important".

It takes an exceptionally bright young artist to REALIZE they need those things and go out of their way to find and pay for them. Neither Patreon nor Youtube is going to provide an editor and certainly not force you to use one - no matter how valuable it may be.

Then don't use a label/publisher? There are apparently very low fee labels which just act as a tool to get your content on spotify without doing any more. But artists keep using labels so they are either making illogical choices or they are getting value from it.