Do you know how many streams they have to have before they get a single penny? Besides streaming does not interest me, I like to have my physical media. I pay my money upfront and I own the media. I think most artist would rather have my £20 upfront for the album, rather than get that £20 in bits over the next say 10 years of me streaming that album.
I respect your stance on streaming, its your money & you spend it as you wish but your post prompted me to do a bit of digging on the internet. (I'm a pensioner & have nothing better to do).
As a rough guide, an artist will receive 10% of the revenue per sale (minus packaging & promotional costs).
There is a lot of conflicting information & pseudo data on the web relating to streaming revenues. This is the best that I could come up with.....
20% of streaming users will buy more albums than they did before they adopted streaming.
55% of users will discover new artists because of streaming.
Streaming is used almost equally by both male & females whereas that proportion is skewed heavily toward male for hard copy purchases.
We will always buy music, there is no doubt about that but the old ways of music promotion is long dead, music pluggers, payola on the radio, rigged charts etc & the media savvy artists are pushing to get their music onto the premium streaming sites for wider exposure. Greater exposure brings with it sales, promotional tours, live gigs & sponsorship opportunities.