I’ll be honest, I’m aware that IT stands for information technology but… I don’t think I would ever associate a website with .it with anything other than Italy. Maybe other people think the same and that’s why it’s less popular?
Or maybe it’s because you can get even weirder ones now, like .tech, .online, .art etc.
I don’t self-host my music streaming currently (lack of funds) but I’m planning to in the future. I live in a large city and borrow CDs from the library to rip at home. This might not work for more obscure stuff or if you don’t have a good library in your area, but this way I don’t need to make more space for CDs and I support the library doing it. If I want to support artists, I get merch and/or go to concerts.