I think the competition is fair. People put music on the Internet, get the limited spots in music venues, work their way to being opening acts for different popularity levels of music artists. It's more fair today than ever

What I'm saying is that good music spreads itself but not in a way that makes a viable career. You can get a following that from just the raw listener numbers may look good but the payout being low. Like in the 80s if someone had 800,000 people that listened to their album, they probably made a good amount of money. To hear the album they probably had to buy the music or go to a concert. Today streaming you can get to 800,000 listens for an album and that may not even be a years worth of rent depending on where you are in the world.

On Spotify I'll listen to music where their profile says 40,000 listeners and I really like their music. They're making no money. Both impressive to have 40,000 listeners but it's not a good income. So like ya good music spreads itself but not well enough to make traditional music studios not needed if someone wants to live a better life than constantly on tour in cheap motels or couch surfing

Ultimately my point is not solid because there's no solution. Most will fail regardless of their hard work and skill. We understand it sucks that so many talented artist fail to make a living on their art but since Napster and iTunes we still don't have a solution