I was at our local HMV record store in Ontario which caters to an area of many thousands of people. The folk music section which a couple of years ago was quite substantial is now a complete embarrasement. There are no independant folk artists in their stores anymore, and the ones that are there, are from just a couple of the distributors available, and they only have a tiny collection of artists in stock. The names and genres were all mixed up and in there were a host of comedy and deleted specials from other genres. The few CD'S that were there will inevitably be returned to the distributor in short order if they don't sell and the distributor has the right to return those CD'S to the record companies at zero expense to them. Stores do not care and obviously do not spend any energy to promote folk music recordings anymore - they are just hoping that we will all go away.
Well most of us artists are out of the stores because of this senario, but by the looks of things I wouldn't want to be there anyway.
I've recently had an offer to put my CD's in stores in the U.S.A. by a big distributor -all on consignment. Same deal - they can return all that don't sell. I'm really worried that they'll just land in hell stores like HMV all over the place and linger in limbo - so I haven't chosen that option.
Also by the looks of things CD's are quickly on their way out. No one under 20 years old wants to spend $ on a CD. They download everything they can get for free, or burn CD's they borrow. Good luck to any folk artists marketing recordings these days .

Arnie Naiman