The only money I've ever made off of music is doing live gigs. Give your music away for almost nothing (or dirt cheap) and then play your own shows.
This is The Problem for the record industry - there's an almost infinite supply of very talented musicians that are thrilled to do exactly what you suggest. That makes it extremely difficult to buy the argument that we won't have music anymore if people aren't willing to pay for records. It just not true, all we'd lose is heavily produced pop music, and everyone else would continue to play because they really love it. I don't see live gigs drying up as an income source for quite a while, and they are (just barely) enough to let plenty of people play for a living.
I'd add "teach lessons" to that list, too, that's how most of the musicians that I know actually make rent each month; gigs are just beer money if you've got a full roster of students. Learn a few extra instruments, you don't have to be very good to teach most students - I know drummers that teach piano, pianists that teach guitar, etc. To optimize for income, find yourself a nice rich suburb with some cheaper (but still pleasant) areas to live in around it, and teach lessons to the kids in the suburb (you can charge probably 2-3x what you'd get anywhere else, even if you're not one of the best) while living cheap a couple towns over and playing gigs in the city that you're near.
It's strange to me that some people seem to believe that artists would stop making art without economic incentive. As if somehow, the prospect of being financially rewarded is the differentiator between creating art and not. As long as you are making enough money to be comfortable (or maybe not, for some artists!) there's no amount of money you can offer someone to make them a better artist.
Yet another similarity between artists and programmers: you cannot get someone to create something that otherwise would not have been able to by offering money.
Might I add that there are plenty of people on the production side who are thrilled to make overproduced pop music, and that type music would not vanish either.
This is The Problem for the record industry - there's an almost infinite supply of very talented musicians that are thrilled to do exactly what you suggest. That makes it extremely difficult to buy the argument that we won't have music anymore if people aren't willing to pay for records. It just not true, all we'd lose is heavily produced pop music, and everyone else would continue to play because they really love it. I don't see live gigs drying up as an income source for quite a while, and they are (just barely) enough to let plenty of people play for a living.
I'd add "teach lessons" to that list, too, that's how most of the musicians that I know actually make rent each month; gigs are just beer money if you've got a full roster of students. Learn a few extra instruments, you don't have to be very good to teach most students - I know drummers that teach piano, pianists that teach guitar, etc. To optimize for income, find yourself a nice rich suburb with some cheaper (but still pleasant) areas to live in around it, and teach lessons to the kids in the suburb (you can charge probably 2-3x what you'd get anywhere else, even if you're not one of the best) while living cheap a couple towns over and playing gigs in the city that you're near.