system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How does the music industry still make money when all music is available for free or almost for free online?

It used to be you had to spend $20 on just one CD. People would spend thousands on CD collections.

These days you can access so much for free, and what isn't free you can get for $10/month or less. Music piracy was rampant in the late 90s and 2000s with MP3s, these days no one even bothers with that because it's all free anyway.

How do they still make money?
gpt
It's all in the "almost for free".  That money pays everybody in the music industry.  That was the solution, make music cheap enough that people choose to pay for it.  With enough people, that's plenty of money.