This is an argument that, for an independent "middle-class" musician, giving recordings away in return for direct fan contact can be economically superior to selling individual downloads. Fully agree. I started to do so more than twenty years ago: https://rochus-keller.ch/?cat=3. I went even a step further in that I'm not even associated with a collecting-society (SUISA here in Switzerland), but permit everyone including radio stations or vloggers to play my music for free; the very little copyright royalties is much less than the publicity effect.