imo, it's better to have a million bands dicking around and having fun playing terrible shows for crowds of ten people than a hundred polished superstar groups playing sold out arenas.

Those are not the only two choices. There are so many great bands playing shows to hundreds or a few thousand people.

Maybe you don't value music or live music, but there are a lot of people out there that do. You not caring much for it doesn't change the fact or make it ok that they're getting stiffed by those with the upper hand in the relationship.

At least for metal, there are still tons of tiny musicians. Underground labels do cassette runs for the smallest of them, medium-tiny ones might get vinyls.

Bandcamp is chock full of bands, from home produced stuff, to bands spending saved money on a cheap studio. It's enough that even in the sub-niches I like, I can listen to 10-20 newly released albums every week.

I doubt more than a small single digit percentage of them make money that way, but they very often really enjoy what they are doing.