Fire TV: Amazon to block piracy apps in the future

How many musicians make their living off of recorded music anymore?

The real question is how many make a living now vs when music piracy was at it's highest.

My guess is it's higher.

How many did before... my bet is an insignificant number. The vast majority of musicians work day jobs to support their art. The ones that do make money make it mostly from performances. Making money from recordings only was always a small niche.

The Napster era was the period when I bought the most CDs, by a large margin.

It was new+exciting, I was discovering lots of new music. But at that point, casual piracy over slow connections (low-bitrate often-poorly-encoded MP3s) wasn't quite good enough to replace real CDs. And back then, MP3 was still a 'nerdy computer thing' and CD players were everywhere - and by far the most convenient way to play music on a proper hi-fi, in a car, etc.

But these days, there isn't really the same upgrade path from a lower-quality pirated copy to an authentic copy. Especially with TV/movies, now tied to subscription services and encumbered by increasing levels of ads.

Implication being that piracy reduced the amount of people who could make a living off music? Another explanation is that simply more people are making music. I suspect the actual percentage of musicians who can make a living is the same as ever though.