I interact with a lot of small bands on the fringe of the music scene (death metal, thrash, black metal etc) some signed and some not. All but the very large are having a really tough time. While the internet gives them exposure it's not really giving them a revenue stream. Not everyone has the pulling power of Reznor.

A lot of these small bands can't see a future at the moment and whether you like this genre of music or not all the fringe genre's are suffering.

It's hard to see if things are worse in their world then ten years ago but according to them and their publishers things are indeed worse. I wish I knew the answer to this.

In the mid 90's MTV did a salary survey of moderately successful bands and found that the average yearly salary was about 30k, putting it in the range of an entry level office job. These weren't the biggest names in music, but they were definitely on the high end. This was long before the rise of peer to peer downloads, and even then professional music was not a viable career path. Blaming technology advancements for artists not being able to make a living off of their art is just a scape goat.

The concept of a "starving artist" predates the rise of computers and transcends all media. The only difference between the music industry and painting, sculpting, writing, or any other form of art is that a myth of past profitability has been propagated in recent years. The (unchanged) reality is that artistic expression doesn't generate revenue streams except for the very few, lucky artists.