FWIW, I find glue code and integration to be quite rewarding sometimes. You take other good, useful things and connect them, resulting in a new/bigger/better useful thing... without "doing anything"! :)

Seriously, for some of the things you mentioned, I suspect the key is to NOT be highly focused on the career path which pays the most. I kind of doubt that audio programmers are paid as much as Sharepoint developers, but I would hope they have more fun.