Easy, FRiend. I know that's not what you meant - it was just fun to jump on that little logic train for a minute ;)
We seem to wind up having this same discussion every few months or so for some reason, but I still don't see any reason why recorded music can't become effectively a loss-leader for musicians, released purely for the sake of promotion - recording and editing equipment in this digital age has gotten cheap enough that you can put together a very decent little home studio for under $10,000 these days, rather than paying some talentless putz $250 an hour for the privilege of borrowing his space. And then the real source of income becomes live performances - club dates, music festivals, and so forth - and merchandising. T-shirts are already a pretty fat moneymaker for many artists, since they can usually negotiate a much more lucrative arrangement on that sort of thing than with the kinds of contracts the record companies hand out. Free music from the web and P2P networks, t-shirts, posters, keychains and other trinkets, and CD's from online sales. Local clubs and concerts to start building a following, and word-of-mouth for the rest, or finance your own ad campaign if you want. Save your nickels and send out demo CDs to clubs and festivals around your area, your state - and if you're ambitious, around the country - to set up your own bookings. Hire yourself out as a songwriter - lots of classical music was written on commission for wealthy patrons, as you noted. And have a day job if you need to - nobody has a right to have a full-time career as a musician, just the right to pursue a full-time career as a musician.
No, nobody's ever done it that way from the ground up - Jimmy Buffett has a model that's very close to this nowadays, but of course he had a record company backing him at the beginning. But that's hardly proof that it can't be done from scratch too. The only way to know for sure is to try it and see - essentially, the only major difference is that musicians will be a lot more like any other small businessman than they ever have been before. Some will have the talent and luck to make it big and break through on a national or international level, some will have a devoted band of hardcore fans, some will do it as a sidelight, without worrying too much about the money it doesn't bring in, and some will never go anywhere and fold up shop - pretty much just like it is now, except without the middleman. It's been done before in other artistic fields - I have a couple of friends who are in the process of building a full-blown performing-arts company, including recruiting performers, finding rehearsal and production space, promoting themselves, and drumming up the funding they need. Music, dance, theater - they're doing the whole nine yards here. And if stuff like that can be done - and it is being done, all the time - then there's no reason that four or five guys with a decent backbeat can't do the same sort of thing.
It'll be fat times for concert promoters and organizers, at least. Not that concert promoters don't have their fair share of A&R-type scumbags either ;)