Has it made earning a living even harder though? Before streaming it was much harder to discover obscure artists from places outside of your own local area, usually you'd go crate-digging vinyls at 2nd hand shops to find the true gems.

I don't understand how enabling access to music from anywhere in the world has made earning a living harder to music artists, the industry was always extremely hard outside of a few lucky ones hand picked by labels to be marketed. The local scenes were (and still are) where most artists could grow their audience, sell albums and merch, it's still the same hard work but now you are able to release your music worldwide in an instant.

Streaming doesn't pay enough on any platform to enable earning a living if you are a small act. And it never will, it's basic economics, there's not enough money from subscriptions and ads to support the millions and millions of artists.

Support the artists, that's orthogonal to Spotify or other streaming services. Buy their albums, merch, go watch their shows.