But taking commissions from the sale of musical selling instruments and even offering consultancy services in respect of the potential sale of such instruments is not strictly making money out of music itself, is it? It's rather more a case of making money from something else which one could only be qualified to make if one has certain experience and knowledge of musical matters. OK, one could say that self-publishing is similar to that in that aims to make money from selling one's work rather than actually doing it in the first place. The extent to which a fine line might be drawn here between strictly musical activity (singing, playing, conducting, composing, etc.) and other activity that one could only pursue if one has certain musical abilities (teaching, reviewing, selling, advising, managing and promoting, etc.) is such as to question the question, which might perhaps be more clearly (if also rather more cumbersomely) phrased as "How to earn money from activities connected with music without teaching or performing", since composition would appear to be the only other activity from which one could actually "earn money with music" (as the question is currently phrased).
That said, earning money from composition has its own special drawbacks. When a commission is received, the usual form is for 50% of the fee to be paid up-front and the remainder upon delivery of the completed score; however, when that score is, for example, a 40-minute orchestral work, there could be a long time between the two payments. More importantly, perhaps, royalties from performances, broadcasts and recordings are often received many months - sometimes even several years - after the event and many of them also have an unfortunate tendency to slip through the net and remain unpaid for an all too wide variety of reasons, so generating a reliable cashflow from composition can take quite some years and can never be guaranteed in any case. Self-publishing can help out with this, of course, although that is essentially an ancillary activity (as I suggested above) in that it aims to derive income from selling work that has already been done.
Best,
Alistair
Topic: How to earn money with music without teaching or performing?