It’s become suddenly urgent for them to decide whether the benefits of streaming make up for its drawbacks. Stripped of gig income, independent artists and labels are trying to squeeze more income out of their recordings. “Most of the money I made from being a musician would come from playing a show, or speaking on a panel, or doing something physically with an audience,” says Chicago rapper CJ Run. But now the pandemic-related shutdown of live music has made even that precarious realignment untenable. Most musicians have had to accept that sales of records, CDs, and tapes will never support them again-and given the notoriously stingy payouts from streaming, they’re focusing on live shows and other merch to make money. The days of listening only to music you could hear on the radio, afford to buy, or copy from friends are long gone. Streaming services have made countless hours of music available for monthly subscription fees that average around $10, and if you’re willing to listen to ads, it can all be free. As long as you have a stable Internet connection, you can hear anything from several vast, overlapping catalogs at any time. Artists have rarely had much say in that price, though, or in how much of the money reaches them-and in some ways recorded music has never been worth less. The price of music has been in flux since it was first commodified on wax cylinders.