TL;DR You’re definitely not the only one. I had to drop out of college because of my toxic family and spend 3 years afterwards wafting around with no purpose and no will to live. But I figured things out and am doing much better now. If my dumb ass can pull it off, you can too.
The year I was in college, and the few years after I dropped out. I went to school as a music education major. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my life, and with how active I was in my high school’s orchestra program most of my family and teachers really pushed me to pursue a career in music. The idea of trying to survive as a gigging musician was honestly a little terrifying, so I decided to major in music education instead of music performance since being a teacher seemed like the more stable route. Turns out I hate kids. Who woulda thunk it?
I went to college in my hometown, so I stayed home instead of living on campus. I lived with my mom and sister who were both alcoholics with bipolar disorder. Plus, music ed is apparently a pretty busy major. So I would have 12 hours worth of classes and assisting student teachers that I wasn’t particularly enjoying, just to come home and break up a fist fight and then (try to) go to sleep in a room with a gaping hole in the ceiling that all of the roaches that infested the walls would enter the rest of the house through.
Needless to say, this environment was not conducive to succeeding in school. I lost my academic scholarship. Previously, that was enough to pay for all of my schooling, but without it I’d have to take out loans every semester just to finish a major that I didn’t even know if I wanted to do anymore and there was no way in hell I was doing that. So I dropped out and started working while volunteering with the university symphony, until I got a new job with a new schedule that meant I had to stop playing with them. It was an Amazon fulfillment center. Feel free to google that to see why I only lasted a few weeks. I lost touch with the few friends I made in college, I had a falling out with the closest friend I ever had, I now officially had no purpose in life since I wasn’t able to do anything with music, and had no plan for getting myself out of my abusive and toxic home life.
That period was rough, but I eventually made it out of there. Long story short, I was able to do warehouse work until I could move out, I did a 3 month program at a community college to get some IT certifications, and now I make $70k/yr to work from home doing tech support for robots with plans to finally move out of my home town later this year.
I think it’s a great idea. Using melodies from other songwriters/composers has been a part of the western music tradition for centuries: Brahms writing his Academic Festival Overture with melodies from a bunch of drinking songs, Tchaikovsky using both the Russian and French national anthems in the 1812 Overture, both Brahms and Rachmaninoff having pieces titled Variations on a Theme by Paganini, basically the entire history of Jazz music, half of the discography of Led Zeppelin, etc. It seems the logical continuation of this tradition in the digital age would be make samples or sound libraries available for other artists to use. Music is the most collaborative form of art after all, and copyright laws only serve to hinder that while enriching a select few – with those few very infrequently being the actual artists.
Quick plug for King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, who released their album Polygondwanaland for free, including the vinyl masters. So anyone who wanted to could press their own vinyl of the album with their own album art and even create their own music videos. There were a ton of small record labels who made their own prints with super cool designs.