Anecdote coming your way:
My wife is a composer - currently attending UPenn getting her PhD in music composition. She does not typically perform her music herself. In 2009, her concert opera concerning the senate judiciary hearings on former attorney general Alberto Gonzales. We recorded a performance of "The Gonzales Cantata" and posted on Bandcamp, iTunes, and Amazon in anticipation of a series of live performances done at that year's Philadelphia Fringe Festival.
The recording earned a little over $1000 (half that from Bandcamp alone). The live performances earned several times that, enough that we could pay each of the over 30 performers involved at least three figures.
$1000 might not sound like much, but put it into perspective, it was her first recorded piece, and it's probably earned her more than what her professors have made with releases they've done. (Well, not necessarily her Penn professors) Had she released through a label? She was approached by one of the more well known 'classical' labels about doing a studio recording and 'label' release. The deal basically would have been that she'd have paid thousands of dollars, and gotten a box of CDs and miniscule residual income when all was said and done.. and this is how a lot of people in the classical world do things. The money may come from grants or patrons, but it's generally wasted.
$1000 for a single recording is not enough to live off, but $1000 for your first release, particularly a fairly obscure release, is incredibly encouraging. As a composer, she has other sources of income to chase down, whether it's commissions, or sheet music, performances, licensing, etc. I would not be surprised if after graduating, she is able to sustain a living composing music. If that doesn't work out, she can make plenty of money in private lessons.
We haven't done any 'big' recordings since then. Last year we recorded a piano-vocal piece, "Tesla's Pigeon", and commissioned a visual artist to do the cover art. We Kickstarted asking for $550 and raised $787, and while it's up on Bandcamp and iTunes, we haven't gone promotion crazy about it like we did for The Gonzales Cantata, so it's only made a couple hundred dollars, mostly through physical sales at concert performances - which themselves have brought in enough money that again, we were able to pay the performers well and have a nice amount leftover for ourselves.
I think it's a good start, and I think it's far better than she would have been able to do if she were born twenty years sooner than she had been.