> Recording and distribution aren't anywhere close to zero, and a myriad of other costs haven't changed.

Recording used to require very expensive equipment to do things that can now be done with free software. Medium-quality microphones etc. are now a dime a dozen and reasonably high quality ones are well within the reach of any artist who would be making enough money to pay rent.

Distribution of music over the internet is, as close as makes no difference, free. A music track in lossless quality is on the order of megabytes. That amount of storage is completely negligible and transferring it would be fractions of a penny even at the extortionate bandwidth prices charged by EC2 et al. If you're charging $1/song that's a rounding error and if you're distributing music for free in order to sell concert tickets you can use P2P and the users will handle the distribution themselves. This used to be something that required pressing LPs or CDs and physically transporting them on a truck to thousands of records stores.

The "other costs" are mostly the problems the industry creates themselves in order to sell the solution. Monopolizing distribution channels so that only signed artists can get featured, payola, etc. The world would be better off if they would dry up and blow away.