20K for an album isn’t that much tbh if you are work with experienced professionals and not just the homies. Not all artists want to do everything themselves. Most of the major artist do not know how to do everything themselves. The sing, there perform, the allow the rest of there team to handle these other aspects. Not every artists wants to have to wear all of these hats.

This makes me feel a bit ill

Imagine being qualified for a tech job but not being able click around in ableton to get the mix and production you want for your music. Im really curious to hear the difference these people made with thousands of dollars.

I could definitely do a lot with £15000. I produced my first album for about uh £200? and that was mostly just a day rate at a local studio tracking vocals. Had a friend take some photos for album art because I knew what I wanted it to look like, just needed someone to hit the shutter button. Album 2 is going to come to around £1-1.5K because I'm going to head out to a friend's place in Denmark to record over a week or two next year. Most of that is travel costs since I'm going via eurostar.