William and Anand, it's great to hear the conversation evolving and your different perspectives.
You made some valid arguments in favour of freely available music, Anand. I do agree that it is possible to leverage such exposure in to monetizable opportunities, but I would suggest it is far more difficult and far less common than you might imagine. First, a distinction needs to be made: if one is simply a composer of classical/instrumental music, it is likely that the only way they can earn any money from composition is an academic appointment (in which essentially composition serves as their "research" activities, while teaching students is the real reason they're employed) or through a commission. In Canada, we have a great deal of government funding for such activities (performance/composition grants, travel grants/residencies, etc.) However, such grant applications take immense work to assemble, have year-long waiting periods for results, and only end up funding a handful of the thousands of applications per year.
If one is a performer as well as a composer, there may be more opportunities to introduce one's own work to audiences, such as was the case for many years with my duo and quartet. However, even here, the vast majority of our concert bookings would be sold on big-name composers/pieces, or in our case on the novelty of the instrumentation. Then, I would program my own pieces on these shows, between more well-known works. The only success we've ever had selling CDs in meaingful numbers, was at live shows.
I've spent literally thousands of hours making youtube videos, promoting on social media, creating websites, etc. over the years, only to be met with the reality that virtually no income has been generated, and no meaningful audience cultivated through these means. Just putting music up with pictures, or "re-scoring films" with our own original music does nothing to grow a career, save for a very tiny few that either have cracked the code, so to speak (the ability to understand SEO, alogrhythms, etc. to gain visibility on platforms such as youtube).
In another business I have, I could receive 100 views of a youtube video and get a 10% conversion, with 10 sales based on those hundred views. I've had a 50,000 view music performance not get me a single CD sale, simply because the music was freely available and nobody bought it...except at a live concert, where with 100 people in the audience, I could have sold 30 CDs!
Another thing that occurs to me is the difficulty gaining any sort of momentum/traction when one has an individual success. For example, among composer friends of mine (myself included), we may have successfully acquired a commission/premiere performance that was very-well received. One would think through networking, establishing relationships, name-dropping, building up one's bio, successful opportunities would lead to additional ones with the same people and new people connected to them. This typically doesn't happen. Within my own network, if we've done a great concert, it could be 5 plus years before we're invited to perform again with the same organization. If one promoter/presenter speaks highly of us at an arts conference, it rarely leads to tangible opportunities. The truth is, because what we do exists in the realm of art music, and is not financially lucrative, most opportunities only exist through grants/funding programs, which are increasingly hard to come by. The idea of selling out a concert hall for anything but video game orchestral music, Star Wars night, or Beethoven's 5th meets Pink Floyd, is highly unlikely.
As for film scoring, that's even more unlikely. It is 100% based on first, living in the environment (L.A. typically), being well-connected, after spending years sucking up to the right people, and essentially acting as a composer's assistant (slave), moments of luck, incredible charisma/business savvy, etc. Most classical composers are inherantly isolationists, who don't function well in the social circles that one must navigate to become a film composer. Further, their thirst to compose music true to their own interests/talents, can often be at odds with the needs of the industry. For me personally, I wouldn't want to write music according to the whims of a film director that grew up on music I have no interest in, anymore than I'd want to teach seventh grade band...yes, you're technically doing something with music, but it's so far removed from what you actually want to do, that you may as well earn money doing something completely unrelated, and allowing music to be your true escape from the obligations of life.
Just a few more thoughts...I could go on and on (don't open Pandora's Box here!) but, it's fun to discuss these things, even if they can be somewhat depressing.
All the best,
Dave