Casey Rae, the chief executive of the Future of Music Coalition, an advocacy group, said that the smartest artists today have learned to be flexible to build an audience and make money.

“Artists and managers are becoming like scientists, looking at lots of data,” Mr. Rae said.

Like many artists who grew up surrounded by free music online — not all of it legal — Mr. Streten has a dim view of the monetary value of his own recordings. “I never expected to make a lot of money from music,” he said. “They’re really more of an advertisement for you to see the show.”

He is also worried about the wild-and-free appeal of SoundCloud being lost if the company behind it, which is based in Berlin, capitulates to the demands of the music industry as it negotiates new licensing deals.

Mr. Streten’s opinions on those matters differ from those of his manager and label representatives, who said that despite the long decline in sales, recorded music remains a vital and growing part of the business. When the self-titled Flume album was released in the United States two years ago, it sold only 584 copies in its first week. But sales grew with every live appearance, remix, commercial or surge in Facebook fans. By the end of last year, his recordings were generating up to $76,000 a month for Mom + Pop.

Thaddeus Rudd, the label’s general manager, said that with the fragmentation of the digital marketplace, a typical album now has as many as 4,000 lines of sales data attached to it. That information comes from well-known outlets like iTunes, YouTube and Spotify as well as others that may contribute only a few pennies. But month after month, it adds up.

“If you look at the entirety of album sales, downloads, Spotify, and compare that to things like licensing and touring, what you start to see is a picture that makes sense,” Mr. Rudd said.