Those artists are trying to make money from live performances because that is
the only way for them to make their own money these days. Gone are people
buying $20+ records (ever since Napster) and instead people would rather
download them on their smart phone, stream via a site like Spotify or
Pandora, or outright take the .mp3 and .flac files from a Torrent site.
If they could still make money from the "old way" of selling records, there
would be less of a need to push t-shirts at a concert at inflated prices or
turn to crowd funding. The reality is that many of these artists do have
bosses and need those bosses at the record companies to not only throw them
chump change once in a while, but to also market them and keep them relevant
via singing at award shows or the Super Bowl.
I'm totally for an artist going solo in creating their own legacy and getting
paid via donations on their site or through something like Patreon. But most
of those times, those artists have a big fanbase due to a media conglomerate
giving them a chance and making them relevant in the first place.
