wedoitfortheloveofmusic

No you're right, radio was definitely more dominant in the past then it is now. Although don't take that for granted. Radio is still the #1 way that artist, "blow" and is still extremely influential.

I'll try to clarify my point here. The initial question is, Why does the mainstream industry only want a select few to be popular?

At the end of the day it's a business. They'll do whatever makes them the most money. This trickles down from top to the bottom, each doing whatever makes them the most money. Personally its distasteful to only do things for money, maybe I'm a bit naive and that's another rabbit hole we can discuss later, but even with saying that you can't fault them for doing this. A company/industry is in the business to make money otherwise why else would they exist? A company/industry is driven by what their consumers want or believe they need. If you buy, subscribe, and listen to the bs then you're going to continue to receive that bs. The company/industry will continue to streamline their product in order to increase their profits. Thus, if we as consumers, show that we are content with listening to the same 3-4 artists on the radio, guess what they'll comply and they'll continue to streamline this process to make it more efficient. I mean think about maybe 10 years ago, you could listen to the radio and hear a myriad of different artists from different record labels albeit it would be those same artists over and over again. That has not changed for the reasons spoken above but at least you had variety. That has now diminished to 3-4 artists on repeat across all radio stations. I hadn't realized how bad this was until I took a road trip about a year ago from Miami to Kansas and literally heard the same 3-4 artists and 3-4 songs the whole trip back and forth.
So this is why I believe the consumer has gotten lazy. A company/industry would not do something if it didn't make them money. If a company/industry did not receive positive results when only pushing the same 3-4 artists and songs then they would not do it, plain and simple. If there were more people like us, who actively took a stance against this, then things would change but it starts with us the consumer.