You know, Jim, I really appreciate all these stories you have to illustrate your points. It brings in fresh perspectives to the discussion. I also appreciate hearing about your situation Ralphie, and it gives me pause for thought. It also makes me want to hear some of your squeezebox playing, which is another thing I've only begun to appreciate since finding folk music blogs. But I also think its very limiting to define your niche so narrowly. The whole point in blogs is that specialized music gets distributed to many more people. So you may only have 1000 people in England who would go for it, but as has been pointed out, Lizardson is Japanese, other contributors to the blog are from Italy, France, Holland, and the other British Folk blog that I know of is run by a Russian and receives mostly Russian visitors. So you may in fact have quite a larger market than you think, and if you embrace the potential that the internet offers, it could be a larger market still. Bluegrass was mostly an old-folks thing for a long time. Than the Cohen brothers got a whiff of it, used it in a movie, and now there's loads of performers, fans, festival-goers, and yes: album-buyers in the younger generation. If you want to target younger people and expand your audience, the internet is a pretty great way to do it.

As for the response to my 'control vs freedom' comment, I'm intrigued by how much anger it has drawn. Of course I threw it in there to provoke a bit of unorthodox thought. But interesting that so many equate releasing control with starving. So far in my life, the times when I've given up control over my life-situation or gone into situations in which I had little control have been the times when I was most happy, learned the most, and was given the most opportunities. In short, the times in which I was most alive. And when I was doing what was right for me, the money always came. I never had to go grabbing after it. Bit of an esoteric principle for a folk forum, I suppose, but let me give an example to illustrate:

When you walk down a pedestrian mall or somewhere, and there's people on the streets trying to make money, who do you give to: the beggar who's shaking their cup of change at you, or the busker who's freely giving away their talent (music, mime, whathaveyou)? When you give without expecting anything in return (in other words, when you release control), people are warmed, and they tend to give in return. In my own experience busking, I've found that when I was playing because I really wanted or needed the money, I would get next-to-nothing. When I was playing just for the love of it and really trying to share my love for the music with whoever was walking by, people would take note, and stop and listen, and leave me a fiver or more. Neediness pushes people away, love and trust draw them in. Just like in any relationship. If you try to control it you kill the magic. But that's just my personal experience, and maybe it's a bunch of '60s hogwash' (wouldn't know, wasn't alive then!).