A large part of it is there's less artists breaking through now. Nepotism has always been a path, but there's less paths to major success now. Labels are less influential, monoculture is dead, people are happy streaming the same old music, kids can easily discover old pop hits and fall in love with those instead of what's being pushed to them now (kids watch that MJ movie like it's Frozen), etc. Having a major label and connections and money does a lot to get enough of a push to make noise. Also, some of the other paths to success were pretty dark before. Why was it a thing for managers to find a poor 11 year old and snatch them from their family so they can be developed for a few years in hopes of them getting signed by a major label? Most of those people have moved on to developing social media personalities since that's more lucrative.