why would a musician want to make a label rich when he/she/they can now easily grasp all the tools for themselves and keep all that loot in-house instead of having to deal with arrogant AR guys who try to screw you out of about 9/10ths of the money while they tell you what to do on the record?

I think Loreena McKennit is an excellent model of what can be done very very easily now with the incredibly cheap tools that are available to anyone with a couple of hundred bucks plus the ability to market oneself globally for a pittance.

In case I wasn't clear, the middle man who is to be screwed is the record company. They could have been in on the bonanza, but that would have required them to give up their illusions of control and relevance, and there are few illusions that are dearer to people in power than those ones.