As someone who owns a small synthwave physical label (killxallxmusic.com), you would almost be correct in your assumption of limited physical releases be where the money is made, but the audience is also relatively limited still so uh that amount of money is not much, haha.

Another thing not mentioned in the article…. hidden tracks! A lot of bands took the approach of hiding random bonus songs or jokes or outtakes at the end of the CD's after like 20 minutes of blank space so you completely forgot they were playing at that point. But the more enterprising bands had those hidden tracks in…