That concert was in 2000, so in today's money that $40 would be around $72.

In 2022 I saw NIN in Cleveland and got GA tickets for $48 each (including fees).

Video is talking about exactly such a local scene and how it's being killed right now.

Didn't most musicians earn their biggest part with merch & concerts back in the day though?

Touring and merch have always been the only way artists could make money. The albums and videos are the advertisement.

I asked my friend who was heavily involved in the funk scene in the 60s/70s (touring with Funkadelic and Chaka Khan) and he calls bullshit on that claim. Unless you're your own label or can sell millions of em, record sales ain't shit. It's all about the concerts and merch.

Unless you’re at the top, touring and merch have always been the money-makers. Can you provide evidence of this flip? Speaking from 20+ yr in DIY music, I’ve never known a band who wasn’t in big box stores to make anything approaching stable money off records and the bands I know in big box stores aren’t big enough to make much at all off 10% to 20% of a low volume of sales. Bands that are big enough to sell out a stadium are above my scope so I can only guess, say, Metallica made enough off record sales to do dumb shit like sue Napster.

On the backend I have yet to see a valid reason other than greed for a ticket servicer or artist to gouge prices as high as they go. Ticketmaster has openly talked about how they happily hide higher prices behind service fees for artists too afraid to openly gouge and secretly colludes with artists.

I don’t have the ability to listen to a video right now

This is the same as reading a clickbait headline and going off in the wrong direction. Your point is contradicted in the summary of the video and skimming the summary highlights all the things you would need to know.

What you're talking about happened way before the Ticketmaster-Live Nation monopoly became a thing. Today if you want to make a medium to large concert you have no choice most of the time but to use a Live Nation venue and Ticketmaster for tickets. For example Live Nation owns all large concert venues in Toronto and I recently learned they've purchased the well known smaller venues over the last few years. They're now in a position to extract more value from fans and performers. Similar to how large grocery chains can extract from both customers and suppliers.

You should see the video though. It explains things well.

This is the most absurd falsehood I’ve ever read in my life.