With music being so highly accessible these days it's no surprise that musicians are struggling to make money. However even before Spotify etc musicians were still finding their income was being subtracted from other sources.
My question is, over the last few hundred years have musicians ever been well paid? Like Mozart/Beethoven/John Farland/Bach/whoever else, and the minor musicians of those times?
If you want to limit it to the Baroque and Classical world, of the late 17th and 18th centuries, professional musicians had various careers, like now, and like now could do a mix of them to make a living, so it is hard to generalize. But there are some examples of financial success.
Muzio Clementi was an Italian keyboard virtuoso who was noticed by an English noble, Sir Peter Beckford, brought to Englandin 1766 and installed on Beckford's Dorset estate for several years as music student and estate musician. The piano was just becoming an important instrument , and Clementi became one of its first noted performers. He also taught, discovered a lot of playing techniques, composed music and keyboard studies, and manufactured pianos. He was canny enough to publish important composers as well- he was Beethoven's publisher for England- and with all that he died a reasonably wealthy man.
Anne Catley was a poor girl, but possessed a good voice, was attractive and looked good on stage, and had the ability to act. She quickly became the rage of the London theater in the 1770's. She was also hard-headed enough to be good at negotiating her fees, being famous for refusing to sing unless her price was met. Although she was said to be married to her partner Francis Lascelles ( who did settle amounts of money on her children in his will) she was never legally married and so maintained control of her own money until she died in 1789, leaving an estate worth 5,000 pounds.
But this is before recording sales, air play and mass distribution, before there were international copyrights and royalties. Like in earlier centuries, there were musicians who simply played for small wages, and/or were kept by nobles. The Esterhazy family kept Joseph Haydn for most of his life as the house composer and bandleader. Composition alone did not pay well for an independent musician. Beethoven was a noted performer in his younger years- could play both piano and viola. But as he concentrated more and more on composition, though he and his brother tried to maximize his earnings ( sometimes to the point of being fast and loose with his agreements) and he attained independence, he never became wealthy.