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What artists and musicians need most is time to work and improve their skills. Finding a way to get that and still eat is the challenge. Specifics for composers, I don't know, but I think his point about tapping the 90% of the world that doesn't go to classical music concerts is a good one. You can either make exactly what you want, and spend a lot of time looking for someone to pay you for it, or you can find a way to make something that lots of people are already looking for, but which you also enjoy. I make a lot of coffee mugs. Just about anybody needs and can afford a coffee mug. And I can make them just the way I want to. I'm sure I could find someone who wanted a $15,000 clay statue of a pink elephant if I looked really hard, but I would spend more time looking for the customer than I would making the elephant. Not a good use of time.

Well, anecdotally: After a conservatory B.M. in composition, I spent years as a freelancer, well below the poverty line, living the unglamorous life of a musician in a city. It was HARD. For that to work you have to be resourceful, optimistic, healthy overall (and not addicted to anything expensive), willing to live ultra-simply without the luxuries most of your peers are used to, and lucky (especially medically; I lived without health insurance for years, and although I carefully took care of my health, it is also damn lucky I didn't just have some accident or injury during those years). Now I'm finally set with substantial commissions and some solid income, and I don't regret those years, but what I really want to emphasize is the temperament that got me through them. Freelancing requires you to be genuinely okay with very little income and very little stability. If you feel like you'll want more stability, don't let anyone tell you it's selling out or giving up to have a steady job (musical or otherwise). Most of the composers I most admire in my peer group do!

There is an inherent bias in advice on this topic of this sort, in that poor candidates are often oblivious to their own weaknesses, and the better ones are wary of competition.