The problem is that musicians (except, again, from the top-tier ones) aren't making money from live shows either. Tours are being cancelled because they end up costing the artists money.

It's even worse, as the musical acts (once again, excluding Taylor Swift) that are able to survive/thrive from live shows are generally DJs or other low-overhead acts. DJs and other low-overhead acts go on the road with basically just an iPod. Exaggerated, but the point is that traditional bands can't compete, there's too much overhead (lots of equipment to travel with and maintain, more people to feed and manage, etc.)

It's really not that much equipment. Drumset, keyboards, a bunch of guitar amps. Perhaps some horns if your music has that. The rest is local sound and light equipment that is already at the venue. You need 1-2 to load/unload all that and you are set. A band of 6 can tour with 8 people no problem. That's only a 33% overhead. (Then you also need to rent a truck and drive it around, but you can do that pretty cheaply too.)

Main issue is that the 100% baseline is already too little. No matter that overhead.

Friend of mine is a big name artist. He has to pay his record label everytime he performs his songs. For big tours he gets exactly one dollar of each ticket. He can make money off of other stuff though depending on how the show is setup he can get money from alcohol and merchandise sales. He's done smaller sets of shows where they charge him 30-50k to perform even if the record label had no part whatsoever in putting the shows together. Like if he wants to play at a local bar where we grew up he has to pay them.

Sounds like a horrible contract your friend signed. I too have a similar friend who plays many local gigs when in town.