I've been a touring musician for over 10 years. The thing is, while streaming services provide very little money, they sill provide some. If youtube stops playing ads on music videos (and by extent stop paying artists), artists won't sell more merch, they will not sell more tickets, but they will loose that little bit of income.
Singles used to be an advertisement, they would make the artist more known and be ads for the full album. This is no longer the case since the whole album is available on youtube on release day. Public tv has shows you can watch for free, you have to sit through commercials though, why would it be different for music ? Producing an album is extremely expensive and we don't expect movie studios to distribute their movies for free because they'll sell merch. Not even children movies that are obviously made to sell toys.
Singles used to be an advertisement, they would make the artist more known and be ads for the full album. This is no longer the case since the whole album is available on youtube on release day. Public tv has shows you can watch for free, you have to sit through commercials though, why would it be different for music ? Producing an album is extremely expensive and we don't expect movie studios to distribute their movies for free because they'll sell merch. Not even children movies that are obviously made to sell toys.