Livestreaming and live performances and merch creation are all vastly different skillsets than making music in your bedroom, and some musicians are only really good at that part.

As someone who recently (and probably unsustainably) got out of the cycle of worthless jobs and knows a handful of musicians, here's my perspective:

Indie (and indie label) musicians can actually do fairly well with recorded music. No, they won't be rich. Middle class is at most the target, usually under. Live in a third-tier city and have few expenses. You don't need to sell very much for a baseline livable state.

$10000 a month isn't an achievable target for most working artists. $800, on the other hand, is, even without touring. Sell a handful of Bandcamp copies, sell a few physical copies (cassettes are best for this in the current moment, being cheap to produce and having a fairly loyal audience), have your back catalog do well enough on streaming.

$800 is enough to live on, if you're living with roommates. In many ways, living with $800/month and no unfulfilling 40hr job is much better than living with $1800 and an unfulfilling 40hr job. Even if you don't want to live with roommates, it cuts the amount of work for an employer you have to do by a great deal. Working low-skill work is soul-crushing.

For authors, from what I understand, this baseline is even more achievable. If you have no hopes of getting rich, the current copyright system is fine.

On top of the things you listed?

Genital mutilation is common and accepted. Sex trafficking is common. Politicians are extremely nepotistic. Politicians are Haskell programmers. They outright murder people convicted of certain crimes. Conversion therapy is legal. Children are not allowed to view content with LGBT people in it. That's just scratching the surface; it is similar to the UAE in that it gets an unreasonably high HDI spot for how few human rights and how little decency it actually respects.

There are better "canonical examples" of competent local government, like Zurich, Geneva, or Vienna. All of which are generally rated higher in HDI than Singapore, none of which have the death penalty, and none of which have government officials who are Haskell programmers.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Singapore#Notabl...

2: https://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/singapore/

3: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/05/prime...

I like this new project though. It seems cool.

It makes the entire thing far more seamless, and gives you a better window to get away with it.