For most working musicians, recordings are now a means of selling concert tickets rather than a source of income. The inversion follows from what each format can charge for.
A play is worth a fraction of a penny
Streaming pays per play, and the amount per play is a very small fraction of a unit of currency, divided further among rights holders.
Accumulating meaningful income from that requires play counts on a scale that only a small proportion of artists reach.
The previous model sold a physical album for a substantial sum to each listener once, which produced far more per person than repeated listening now does.
A ticket is a single large transaction
A concert ticket costs many times what a listener will generate through a year of streaming, and it is paid in one action.
Merchandise attaches to the same transaction, adding a further amount from an audience already in a buying frame of mind.
An artist with a modest but committed audience can therefore sustain a career from live work while their recordings return very little.
The performance cannot be copied
The underlying reason is scarcity. A recording can be reproduced infinitely at no cost, which drives its price towards nothing.
Attendance at a specific performance in a specific room is limited by the capacity of that room and cannot be duplicated.
Anything genuinely scarce retains its price, which is why the scarce component of a music career became the component that pays.
Touring costs rose alongside it
The shift did not make touring easy. Transport, crew, accommodation and production have all become more expensive.
Because more artists now depend on live work, competition for venues and for audience spending increased at the same time.
Many tours therefore run on thin margins, and a cancelled date or a mechanical failure can turn a run into a loss.
What this does to the records
Releases are increasingly scheduled to support touring, appearing when a tour is announced rather than when the material is finished.
Some artists treat recording as promotional expenditure, accepting that the record will not recoup and judging it by ticket sales instead.
The consequence is that the health of a musician's career is now read from their touring schedule, which is the part of the business where the money actually arrives.