Revenue based on selling copies of a recording is down. The cost of reproducing copies is less than ever. The barrier to creating your own music and distributing it to everyone in the world is less than ever.
All the middlemen cranking out wasteful copies of just one thing are not necessary since music is trivially reproduced with digital copies.
How much should music make as an industry? Who should be making the money from the music that is made? how much money should you make off of a single song that is performed a single time?
This is always a controversial issue. The loudest opinions typically say "they need to make more", which is the same opinion about nearly any profession in the entire world aside from the ones that make the very most money. Some musicians still fall into that category.
At the end of the day the lion's share of revenue doesn't go to a performer anyway, it goes to middlemen who add no value to the actual performance - they just make it be distributed and decide the winners and losers based on arbitrary gatekeeping. The contracts are predatory and the whole thing seems f'd to me.
I know many people with primary and side gigs as performance artists who don't make superstar money, there's no shortage. Live musical performance is all over the place and the ticket prices are outrageously high for any in-demand performance.
Most of us don't have the option for income in perpetuity for work performed - we just get paid for hours worked. Is there an argument around payment in perpetuity vs pay for work performed that should apply across the board?