I had one of those Sony Walkmans in college. A girlfriend gave it to me and it was quite expensive. It sounded decent but was shortlived. Soon came the CD Walkman and then the iPod. Music played publicly and in dorm rooms became mobile, private, and cheap. No longer much of a shared experience where people gathered to listen together.
That depends on how you look at it. Who is getting the money? Not so much the music producers, but those who deliver the music. And someone like me does not spend money anymore, so I am not the customer. But the aging audiophiles who stream are still paying for services, and so are all the young who spotify or whatever.
As society moves away from owning things to renting things, those monthly revenue streams keep going and growing. Constant updates, upgrades, price increases, features, and obsolescence. It is the new distribution model, and in my opinion it took a concerted effort to get to where we are now, from there to here. Paying a pittance many many times over by more and more people starts adding up to real money.
to where that money flows is simply changing over time, and the real issue for musicians, and labels.
Comparing the price of a $50 newly pressed LP on nice thick vinyl to the fractions of pennies paid for a download or bit stream is the wrong way to look at it. It is about one time payments versus constant, never ending streams of money flow.
Of course, this does not address the question in the OP about the Mafia controlling our discussions. Tim has an interesting observation about the glossary of terms.
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