It's kind of halfway between radio and a recording in principle. I think radio play gets about 1% of what streaming does, if it's even worth collecting off PRS.
I don't think that most artists were ever able to earn a living off record sales. A couple of top twenty singles and a silver album might have just about broken even but the vast majority would have been living off an advance from the record company or takings from shows.
This is still a really immature market. I expect that the market power of the new majors will get eroded by more niche platforms with different pricing.
Personally i think that the link between the impulse to hear a song and the mechanism for the artist to get paid is more strongly linked than ever, and that's progress. The middlemen skimming the takings just happen to work for different companies.