That makes sense to me. Our digital music distribution system is stupid to begin with. We shouldn't be paying for digital goods per item. We should be using alternate payment methods. Unfortunately, this is bad news for the RIAA, as they lose out on a large pool of profits because we've automated the distribution problem away.
The patreon/kickstarter model is much better, but the issue with that from the industry's perspective is that it pays artists more or less directly from their fanatical core of devoted fans. You see this model at work on Twitch as well, where a small group of "subscribers" can support a stream that is viewed by the much larger group of followers.
The reason the industry doesn't like it is it requires fanatical fans. It doesn't fit with a model of bland, mass-appeal content; the kind of stuff that everyone likes but nobody loves.
You still need to build up that fanbase somehow. So many _pieces_ of the industry infrastructure may yet have a place (agents, financing, mentorship, hustling, whatever), but yeah definitely the sun is setting on the old-school business of "getting signed" as being the big goal for an artist looking to go big.
