I don't think it ruined music as art. The signal ratio just got reduced for most due to the commodization.

As a consumer you now have access to an abundance of music for virtually free.

As an artist you can now reach people all over the world for free but your music has to be substantially better to stand out or it'll get lost in the long tail of other artists trying to do the same.

Nearly everything in life is also a power law distribution so having more music available means you as the consumer are more exposed to the long tail than ever before.
It used to get filtered for you by not even being on the shelves, now it's on spotify because it costs them nothing to host and might earn them a penny in royalties eventually.

So as a user you now need to actively filter a lot more to find the best stuff for you personally or just accept/drown in the mediocre recommendation of mainstream.
The current crop of streaming services will get blockbuster'ed eventually by some new tech (built on nostr?) that connects suitable listeners and artists.

Those adopting the new technology usually have an edge so I imagine we'll end up also having one of the top artists of this decade end up heavily relying on AI in an innovative way.

As for artists surviving:
Really successful artists can now make more money than at any time in history before. They're good.

Everyone else that's in the long tail: adopting a #bitcoin standard (and being net producers) will allow them to save up money over years of working (even if it's just the occational local music gigs) and make them richer compared to what aspiring artists are scrapping by nowaways due to inflation - in turn giving them more time to experiment and improve their craft.

Plus in a decade+ with new tech, artists will be able to hold private concerts for their fans (even if a small group & globally distributed) in VR which itself will earn them more than being rank 22,000 in spotify nowadays. Some of the upcoming conference tech is WILD.

So building a strong community and cutting through the noise to reach the right target audience will be as important as ever but it's a twoway street - as a consumer you must also seek it out.

Progress cannot be halted. Embrace it. 🫡