From a business standpoint, the major record labels have a lot in common with the old movie studios. Consider the time & capital spent developing talent. How many "made it big" vs. how many were "one hit wonders" -- or never made it at all? The monopolies are largely gone as production costs have dropped. Oh yeah, there are still blockbuster movies, but then you get groundbreaking stuff being created on Youtube that gets picked up by the streaming services. It's chaos out there.
Frank Zappa observed that in the 60s, it was the old guys with the cigars who decided which bands got signed, “Who knows? Let’s give it a chance, and see what happens.”
Then in the 70s, the young guys took over, and they were more conservative than the old guys with the cigars were, because they were young, and they thought they knew what young people wanted to listen to.
That is the great, thing about the business model today.
When I was trying to ‘make it’ (1975-1995), you ‘got signed’ (which meant signing away a heck of a lot of your rights, too!) and did what the studios said. Even if you sold a million records, you only made a penny or two from each.
Now an artist can record a CD at home, with Logic or Pro Tools, have them duplicated and do the artwork myself (actually my percussionist is a professional illustrator, for example), and get $5-$7.50 from each $12 CD; you don’t need to sell all that many to break even or even make a bit. And uploading to a streaming service costs even less. It’s a new model, but it also means I can find stuff I really like and buy it, with most of the money actually going to the artist, and entirely circumventing some A&R droid who thinks they know what is ‘good’ or isn’t.
It’s probably harder to be a teen pop idol, or someone who needs everything done for them, it’s great for old farts like me who don’t want to have to kiss anyone’s ass and want to play and listen to what *I* like without worrying about what anyone else thinks.