Musicians are not the ones raking in all the money - the record companies are the ones doing that. There are plenty of articles about how artists would have made more money working at McDonalds while the record company brought in 8-9 digits of revenue. In TLC's case, their 2 albums sold over $100,000,000 yet the 3 artists each received less than $50k. The studio and management companies made bank.

Samples: 0 - https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/

1 - http://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/25/business/tlc-settles-suit-...

> The group later revealed that the owner of Pebbitone made them pay $3 million to own the rights to their name.

2 - https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/tlcs-crazysexycool-...