Still better than not getting published at all, no?
Did not understand what you meant by getting published.
If it means uploading music to Spotify etc. it doesn't help much for most bands financially ( streaming revinues alone are not sustainable)
Before this Plague getting live gigs in music festivals were the only significant stream of revenue. Playing in pubs etc. also helped.
Moreover getting thousands of streams never helped getting gigs.
General consumers don't know/ give a flying **** about the musicians' financial situation.
It is the exposure in Bandlab or Bandcamp that actually used to help get live gigs.
For electronic musicians, it's slightly easier out there ( less expensive equipments, sample/ loop based music...a Push 2, laptop with Ableton Live can be enough) but it's the bands with real instrument players suffering the most.
I'm not dependent financially on music production/ performance, but I used to earn between 2k to 5k EUR in 2018, 2019 ( playing at local pubs on weekends, occassional fests if I'm lucky, if the regular bassists have other commitments for 4/5 bands, but mixing and mastering and occasional live mixing was the main source of revenue for me)
It's all gone now.
Regarding torrent, I have stopped them long ago as now I can afford.
But AFAIK young people still download / upload music of well established musicians earning in billions, whatever Lars and other assholes like him think, piracy hardly affect them financially.
Copyrighting old music is a complex thing and beyond scope of this forum.
I've nothing against music piracy, it helped many bands for years. How many streaming services have helped a single unknown band / artist financially?
Barring very few dinosaurs, most musicians are independent now. As most of those giant record companies are mostly gone/ or renting studios to indie musicians.
These streaming services are no better than those mammoth record companies. They shaft both customers ( by streaming crappy quality audio...if you understand gain staging and metering have a look at Spotify standards..they will fool you by saying it's to stop loudness war as almost no one outside production engineers truly understand that matter..they expect all genres to stick to their crappy limits and accept penalties if you dare to cross their limits....they think a jazz album and a brutal death metal album should have same standards...I can rant on and on...but it's futile) and musicians.
I know little bit of the music industry and MANY musicians are at their breaking points.
If these companies don't change their weird revenue sharing policies , they will go out of business slowly and some big bands will help to bring them down. Some already offer their new albums completely free, more will follow. By big bands I don't mean the current younger pop/ mumble rap garbage...true great bands. Radiohead has done it already (don't be shocked to get their entire discography for free completely legally)Prince did it way back. Eventually most band/ artist who bought their masters from the record companies will give away everything for free.
We will see how the streaming services survive with the real artists gone.
Will happen slowly but surely...unless they share revenue fairly.
