Thanks for responding and opening up the discussion!

In response to your first point - once again, it's not that significant a number, and the kind of musicians who are generally earning good sized royalty checks (and we're still only talking MAYBE a couple hundos a month tops, and that's being generous, but hey, that's a car payment or something) are already rich, for the most part. If they're not, then their only musical-related revenue is from those royalty checks, meaning they probably don't really do any live gigs or much beyond creating some original stuff now and then.

Then we come to your next point: you worry that record companies will sign less bands if there's less revenue coming in for them. So what's the problem there? Record companies became relevant during an era when it was difficult for bands to market themselves to mass audiences, which was long before the internet became widely available. Right now we're sort of seeing this war between old media and new media - the record companies are fighting tooth and nail to hold onto the old ways when, in reality, the market is rapidly changing.

The problem I have with many of these major labels is that they're becoming so damn greedy, and they will basically leech as much money as they possibly can out of an artist until that artist loses popularity, at which point they just move on to the next big cash grab. There is one main purpose new bands will sign with a major label: to market themselves when they are still trying to expand their audience. There are also a couple of other reasons (one being that record labels have the means to create and distribute mass physical copies of their music, but that's not the only way to share it these days), but that's the primary one. They don't do it for a big sustainable income. That's just not being realistic. This is the reason many groups tend to create their own labels after becoming popular. While operating under their own label, they can take as much of the profits as they want.

Anyway, before I lose sight of my point, here it is: music isn't going to die that easy. If the greedy major labels who are already ripping their clients off stop signing new bands, sure, those labels may die off, or sign less bands. But that's not necessarily as big a problem as you might think - there are lots of new, cheaper tools nowadays to market oneself as a budding musician. Almost anyone can make it, if they have some talent and a computer with internet access. Plus CD sales are getting dangerously close to dying off in the era of downloadable content, so that's another reason the labels in their current manifestation are no longer relevant. The artist now has the tools to distribute his work himself, and inexpensively to boot (see Bandcamp above).

All of this not even to mention the fact that it is ridiculously cheap for labels to operate these days. Once again, the majority of sales are digital rather than physical now, so there is not much money going into production of CDs and Vinyl anymore. The losses are not as big as they'd have you believe, and they're still making enough to be wiping their asses with cash.

Plus think about this: no more labels, no more Biebers. I can't say I have a problem with that.

So there ends my tangent about greedy, and IMO, unnecessary record labels. You may disagree with me, and that's fine. I'm always willing to listen and have my mind changed.