If you worked out how to crack the distributor game, you could make a VERY comfortable living back in the 90s producing mediocre dance music under many different names.
You could make a VERY comfortable living as a writer in 80s and 90s writing for niche literary or special interest magazines. Or producing mid-market fiction. Especially romantic novels.
Until around 2000, you could make a VERY comfortable living as a competent but not outstanding orchestral sessions musician, as long as you lived in one of the bigger music cities (London, LA, NY, Tokyo, Berlin.) Until around 2010, likewise for pop session musicians (add Nashville and a few others.)
Most of those opportunities have disappeared.
The Long Tail hasn't added anything. It has shuffled around the opportunities. So now you can make a VERY comfortable living as a niche YouTube star, as long as you're the right kind of extrovert and - ideally - at least a little good looking.
And so on for all the other current market slots.
They're not really new at all - just updated variations on the old "self-employed creative" roles which happen to favour a different set of skills.
Before the internet, long tail effects were present with the 1M that could get past the gauntlet of labels and distribution conglomerates. After the internet, musicians had better avenues to get money more directly from fans and fans had better tools for discovery.
You characterize it as being a zero-sum game but I don't believe this is right. I think it's easier now than ever to generate a (small, potentially liveable) income stream from 'mediocre dance music', niche writer, etc.
There are more full-time musicians and musicians earning a living than there were 20 years ago [0] [1]. This is directly due to the internet being the distribution channel.
I would imagine other fields have been effected similarly though I haven't seen a broad study.
[0] https://www.techdirt.com/2013/05/30/massive-growth-independe...
[1] https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/features/raine-group-indepe...
But I can read those things on the Kidle app mostly. I own the books, which were not expensive in money but we’re in effort, because they remind me that in living memory you could be a rockstar celebrity from writing books. I’m not making a moral judgement, maybe I’m just dating myself, but that’s just important to me.
just kidding, I'm almost sure you meant beer ;)
I suspect the investment though for indie bands now is a lot cheaper (cheaper than say filling up the van at every college-town stop).
Easy means, less effort. Less effort means less creativity.
It's a race to the bottom.
Lacking a long tail, culture becomes a race to the banal.
I sold music (i.e. dance / electronic music) from 1990 (pre-internet) and into the mid+ 00s. I saw what easier production and easier distribution did for quality.
Ask any DJ who has lived long enough, and no one will tell you there's less noise.
The alternative is worse though.
We do have more choice. Unfortunately, there's been a disproportunate increase in friction / noise.
A net loss, which supports the article's theory.