Good Soldier Schweik - allow me to clarify. There is actually a secondary dictionary definition of the word 'vital', along the lines of 'full of life; energetic' (it says here). That's the kind of meaning of the word which I was aiming for, not 'vital' as in 'essential'.

Whether competition culture is 'vital' in the sense of 'essential' is difficult to say because it's impossible to know how the music(s) would have developed without it.

My own opinion, for what it's worth (which may or may not be very much) is that competition is only worthwhile if it's promoting valuable aspects of the music. Of course, what is 'valuable' about music is highly subjective, but for my part I'd rather competition encouraged things such as innovation rather than merely bolstering conservatism and enshrining orthodoxies - and whether the BBC Folk Awards is valuable in that regard is open for debate.