Well I feel you but that's the name of the game. The producers will front a lot of the money so that a band use the studios for free and so the band also gets a lot of promotion and airtime and whatnot. In return, the producers get something like 90% of the money that the album sells. Of course, if the album tanks, then the producers in turn eat the cost.
If you REALLY want to support the artists, its better to go to their concerts and to buy their merch. I believe that for every album a band sells, they make something like 1 dollar off of it (which isn't much). I've been to a few concerts where the band expressly said "F our Record Label" lol
In addition, some bands (most of them unknown or local; there are some exceptions) skip the whole record label process and release most of their songs straight online in order to get people to get into their music and to attend their concerts.
