I remember when I read a lot of science fiction in the early 70’s and thinking about record sales. I put the two together and wondered:
Imagine the human race on several planets and having a population of trillions. To become wildly rich you could market a product to a ridiculously tiny fraction of that population.
One of the greatest achievements of the computer and the internet is to get your product in front of billions of people and make it cost effective to charge people and busnesses less than a penny for a thing.
Somewhat related, I recall a science fiction story from years ago that (as a very minor plot point) mentioned a crook who managed to digitally steal a tiny fraction of a penny from each and every bank transaction in the continent of Africa (they had low tech and didn’t detect such minor losses). The guy made trillions and basically collapsed Africa.
Yep-—same formula developed in the pretty-much pre-Internet age from TV with QVC and HSN. Amazing. Surprised brick and mortar is still hanging on.