"can they avoid engaging with the music industry - the people who can organize and manage things on that scale?" - clearly no. I guess (getting back to the slant of the original post) can they avoid engaging with the big commercial behemoths (the Sonys and CBS's of the present day) and remain more "true to their roots" via independent routes (that have an arguably more artistic, less solely commercial vision)? hopefully yes. I have no doubt that at least some artists come up via the independent route and manage to penetrate public consciousness without completely selling out to the big players (for Australian examples, see e.g. Lior and The Waifs ... I doubt that most "folk" (acoustic / roots / Americana / whatever) artists are really what is (currently) sought after by the major labels anyway, and opportunities for self marketing are probably greater now than they have ever been...