From what little I know of this, I'd second Red Max's argument. Chords and lyrics from the web can replace a songbook to a certain extent, but they don't give you the dots for the song (which are useful to many people), they aren't necessarily accurate, and there usually isn't a complete set of every song someone's ever written. Also a songbook often gives bits of biographical detail about how/why the song was written which you wouldn't otherwise know about. And CDs and songbooks are too expensive for me to buy everything I see - but if someone recommends something or the lyrics look interesting, I might consider getting it.

For "traditional" songs, I'm not sure that anyone has a right to expect an income from just publishing the text of the songs. But there certainly is still a place for books *analysing* those songs and their origins, and my belief is that this is where a folklorist's purpose lies. The best books of folksongs also have details about the song's origins and history, and are well worth the money. We may well see the death of those cheap little song booklets printed on A4 that you find buried in boxes in music shops ("20 favourite Irish tunes" or whatever) with words, dots and bad copies of some cheesy woodcut pictures, but that's no great loss to the world and I can't imagine anyone makes any money off them either.

Graham.