You can make truly amazing music without the million dollars of equipment though! It's an optional extra, and I would argue that we would not be culturally less rich if those studios went out of existence. Worst case is that we would just have equally good music with a few slightly rough edges. As an example, I still choose Seth Lakeman's early recordings over his more recent even though they were made on a budget of a quarter of a macbook pro.

Unfortunatelly, so few people, even on this board, understand this. And the whole "artists should be poor and art should be free" idea expressed here many times is all that taken to extreme.