And if there was no demand for streaming, it never would have become the industry standard.
Is there demand for the entire history of recorded music for $10 a month, or semi-free? Gee, what a surprise. You were talking about artists adjusting to technology, from the locomotive onward. I don't argue for fun, so I don't want to misconstrue, but I didn't think I did.
If we're talking about overhauling the royalty system altogether, that would be another subject for another day, but one that would be worth having. I'm not entrenched enough into the business end of things to be able to say whether or not my $.003 stream royalty is fair. All I know is that it falls in line with what royalties have always done... rewarded only musicians who have hit songs. Royalties were never considered a viable source of income unless you had a hit song. Nothing has changed in that regard. What's changed is that a royalty-paying system has made direct music sales obsolete.
This isn't really right. If you were the writer (+ publisher too, especially) of material, you didn't have to have a hit to make a living from mechanical royalties when there was physical product being sold. Performance royalties (radio, muzak) weren't much if you didn't have a hit, yes, (though if you did have even a minor hit, it was worth real money). But today, streaming royalties - both performance and mechanical - are very very low. Forget about making a living from those. I'd say they do indeed need to be re-thought.
Artists in the early 70s started to get more savvy and formed their own labels and controlled their own publishing. You absolutely did not have to have a hit (which has always been a slightly vague term) to make a living. You might not get rich, but you could be a full time musician/band who makes records and tours. The labels were like banks (and some artists got loans from actual banks, which was probably a better deal). As long as you could pay your note (literally or figuratively), you could stay in business. All I'm saying is: if you can't make money on tour anymore (even *with* a hit), and you make nothing on recordings either...wtf? The model doesn't work.
"What percentage of the $15 did the label/publisher take? I've heard that in years gone by it was possible for a record to go platinum without the artist making any money. So they'd go on tour and use the record as the advertising to sell tickets."
Aside from the really crappy deals labels offered, they were also very 'creative' about accounting. You owed them whatever they said you owed them. They had many ways to pretend that your recording supposedly never made a profit, no matter how many units were sold, because they decided - creatively - what the expenses charged to your project were. You paid for every expensive pencil you used, every executive's priceless time 'consulting' your project, promotional costs (which could be anything) etc. etc. Yes, artists could sell tons of units and owe the
label money!