Extreme content saturation and algorithms have created a system where many artists struggle to monetize in any meaningful way. Kevin Kelly posited in his essay "1,000 True Fans" that the internet would empower many more creators to support themselves with their art. Unfortunately, the platforms where people spend time today help to reinforce popular incumbents through trending algorithms while making it incredibly hard for the majority of artists to reach their "True Fans". TikTok, perhaps, is the one alternative to this through their innovations in algorithms that do a better job democratizing early views (a massive part of their success).
Let's look at an example of this on two of the current most popular consumer tech platforms where artists have to have a presence:
Establishing, growing, and retaining your 1,000 True Fans (Product-Market Fit) is the most important part of being a creator once you've created your product (art). As any artist, startup, or business knows this is incredibly challenging! This is a major problem that independent creators will continue to face:
Monetization.
Getting that first monetary transaction from a fan is crucial, and will remain the most difficult + daunting thing. Let's not forget that the music streaming platforms pay pennies on the dollar.
Retention.
Once you've acquired your initial fans, how do you keep them in your ecosystem, engage with them consistently between content releases in a simple manner, and keep them supporting you monetarily? Subscriber retention is incredibly difficult for even resource rich organizations.
Fragmentation.
Some savvy artists will build their own silo'd media empires with more segmented tools on the market (i.e. patreon, memberful, memberstack, circle). However, this reduces their potential for growth from the benefit of a flywheel effect off other independent artists, requires significantly more effort, and could impact retention (more subscriptions = more consumer choice + higher costs = more opportunity for churn).