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Go to more gigs and buy directly from the musicians.

Sounds like you already have your answer, to be honest. I imagine any differences with the other ones will be minimal to you, and indistinguishable to an audience. The 'quick recording' thing I don't get at all. It takes me 2 minutes to set up a proper mic for a recording.

So how do you suggest that we listen to new bands? There are many bands who only release their music on-line, are you saying that we should ignore all of them? Even if the bands can afford to release their music on a physical medium often the cost of sending them out can make them prohibitively expensive. CDs aren't too band but the postage and packing cost for an album on vinyl can double its price, and if you want it to reach its purchaser you have to package it well and send by a reputable service. Here in the UK it may well preclude sending to most foreign in destinations as I described in a previous post. That limits sales of CDs and vinyl to those at gigs. Download sales on Bandcamp, which is about the main source of legal downloads for most bands these days are generally insignificant for new bands. To give you an idea of how insignificant they are last year my band's Spotify streaming payments alone were far greater than our Bandcamp income. Download sales on Bandcamp are generally good for the first week or two of a new release and then tail off to nothing with the occasional sale of our entire catalogue to someone who has just discovered us. On the other hand our income from Spotify is steady and continuous, and that's just from Spotify and not taking into account any of the other streaming services. Also great as Bandcamp is, the audience is mostly other musicians and a few die-hard music fans. Unfortunately these are are not sufficient for most bands to grow their audience in any meaningful way. To do this you have to be on a streaming service.

Do you think musicians have a fair payout for streaming music?

The key phrase is by recorded music. Musicians made money by selling records and CDs for probably about 40/50 years in several centuries. Musicians made money before the gramophone. They make money in the digital age. The important part of the debate is how. Not moaning about the change. Embracing the technology that is available to make a living. I would say that even in the glory days getting well known relied on getting a record deal, getting a promoter etc and unless bands were hugely successful they saw very little money. In many ways smaller bands are better off without the good old days.

Musicians earning fair payment is now 'moaning'? Okay. Hard to have a discussion with someone who thinks otherwise.

Not like the good old days! Things have changed though. The music industry has changed. People’s priorities have changed. How people spend money has changed. Their aspirations have changed. Taking advantage of these changes is far more constructive than moaning about the good old days. The propensity of the UK moaner is something to behold. No matter how much resistance we have the next generation will see things differently, they will use technology differently and they will spend their money and time differently. Musicians made money from recorded music for a very brief period in the big picture. Probably a couple of decades in hundreds of years. That era is over.

I remember even in the late 80s early 90s pubs being rammed to capacity when the most established local bands were playing so can well believe it. It’s not something I witness now but I have limited exposure. It may well still be a ‘thing’?

Streaming music has led me down some great rabbit holes. Last year I started researching the earliest recorded guitar music, which led me to some great stuff like Charlie Christian and Django Rheinhart and led eventually to me 'discovering' semi forgotten gems like Lonnie Johnson and Charlie Patton. I get that it's not great for current artists trying to make a living, but it's also an absolute treasure trove for older music that may otherwise only be obtainable through years of browsing old vinyl at record fairs looking for 1960s reissues of the original 1920s and 30s recordings

Does it benefit the artist? Are they given a fair payout?

How about my Fender telecaster with matching strings! They also came in pink I seem to remember! Made in Japan probably early 2000's I used it in a blues trio with it tuned down a tone as a lot of our tunes were in D and I wanted that low root note. Played through an Ashdown ABM500 with 1 by 15 and 2 by 10 cabs.

My unscientific measurement suggests that the string spacing at the bridge of my AGBR200 is 18.5mm with an overall width (outer edge of string to outer edge of string) of 57.5mm.

There you go. That looks very much like saying using streaming is wrong

It wasn't thirty years or so ago!

I Can't Give You Anything - The Stylistics