> I feel like that isn't categorically less money than artists used to make per song listen?

Fundamentally, inflation-adjusted there are 1/2 as many dollars coming in the front end to the US music industry in the 2020s as there were in the 90s peak, per most sources... even though population is 30% higher. So per-capita music spend in inflation adjusted dollars is down like 60-65%. And there's probably far more artists to spread that around to now with the long tail of bedroom producers / part timers / etc all the way up to Swift.

So surely artists are making less than they used to, regardless of how the pie is sliced up because there is a smaller pie. Given the trend in everything else in our economy, I am dubious that the newer streaming arrangements are incrementally more artist-friendly than the old physical media music industry.