While labels do provide a service, that service is often over-inflated. The labels simply have deals with venues, know people and whatnot but do not actually produce anything other than a logo. The labels realize that without the artists, they're irrelevant. This leads to the labels creating very prohibitive contracts and whatnot that bind the artist many many magnitudes more than it binds them.
I believe more artists aren't speaking out because it'd mean putting their contracts on the line and likely there is part of the agreement where the artists are called to defend the label and render it harmless. Expect Trent Reznor to no longer really make public commentaries on the state of the industry.
The problem is signing on with a label isn't any longer business deal, it's an employment contract because the labels are simply too large for an artist to try to get more realistic terms in a contract.
There are also music royalty groups for whenever a song is played on the radio or an 'authorized' streaming service, the royalties go into a pool, thing is, those pools are run by the labels. So if an independent gets a song played, the labels still get money from it, that's not a service, that's legalized theft.
The service is again, over-inflated and treated like the cornerstone of all entertainment. The labels have crafted the market so that they have become that way in order to essentially get leverage against independents to press them to sign on.