That math doesn't add up.
If a single stream makes (0.04×0.01) dollars or 4% of $0.01 on average, thats $0.004 per stream. If your friend has 1.2M streams a year, that's $4800 in payout per year. Can you elaborate please?
A lot of artists need to emulate success and fandom in order to break into paid work, and that creates a toxic situation where they need to pay up front (for various other things like SEO, interviews, artificial promotion, awards, and even for spots in gigs to get to a success point) before any real success is achieved, or they need to spend many years in unpaid (and very defeating) obscurity before finding out whether they succeed or not.
Statistics really don't apply to everyone on a consistent basis, and a lot of numbers in the mix are totally calculated in "mysterious ways" on purpose.
I focus on licensing rather than streams, that way there is more of a (tangible) contractual negotiation involved.