I spent literal months on my album when I finally finished it. I spent a whole month going through the drum track note by note adjusting each hit so it was just how I wanted it to sound. I reamped my guitars with hundreds of dollars of gear, actually positioned physical microphones and moved real air to get the sound I wanted. The incentive for that effort was solely to produce the product and have something I could share with people. Yeah getting money here and there is nice, but the real motivation was to actually do the thing for its own sake.

And one of the most consistent stories I hear from musicians is that becoming financially dependent on your art places a severe boundary on what kind of art you're allowed to produce. For example, if you're a death metal band and you make your money off death metal, you might have to make a couple more albums of death metal even if, in your heart of hearts, you want to make prog rock now, just to put food on the table.