When I was little I always though that being famous was a merit thing. If a musician was known it was because he or she was excepcional in his/her art: an incredible singer, a highly skilled guitarist, an amazing drummer.
But then I got older and saw a lot of gigs, and a lot of disciplined and truly amazing musicians that nobody heard about… And most were struggling financially, having a side job just to get by. How come? What is missing from them that the “icons” have?
Simple concept of nationalization/globalization. Honestly I would say records or whatever the first tool of pre-recorded music distribution came out that the game changed. IE if we want music somewhere… 99% of the time, hiring live musicians is a pretty silly excess, and well if you are using pre-recorded music, your local band needs to go toe to toe against big record labels… which have highly talented artists, the best marketing and production resources in the world, data driven approaches to attempt to pick the most likely to appeal to the broadest group of people possible etc…
When it does come to live music… Generally speaking the people that do want it, are relatively low budget. If say you are running a bar, how much extra money would you anticipate live music from a relatively unknown band would bring you in a night. Most likely not much if any. On top of that a lot of people enjoy doing music, and there’s just more musicians with pretty good talent, but lack of demand in places for them to go.