In my region of the world an artist of any kind would fall into one of two groups:
-Poor and malnourished member of the common folk.
-Part of the elites, who is set for life anyway and creates art thanks to the ample spare time they have.
I used to be in a band and one major point of contention in our group was whether we could make a living out of this. My opinion was that no, we couldn't.
I have a friend who enjoys moderate success with his band - they're doing historical reconstruction so they're invited to events in the space and, of course, paid. He keeps his day job though. Truth be told in the historical reconstruction field only smiths and tailors can pull off this being their main thing and it's not a given.