Greg Stephens wrote in part,

Of course it doesnt mean that, it means what it says. "A musical tradition that has evolved through the process of oral transmission".Of course that applies to American folk music. Are you seriously claiming that no American music has ever been performed by one person to another, without the intermediaries of microphone and record?

At the time the definition was drawn up, I suspect, though I have no way of proving it, that the authors of the definition were likely as much concerned with written records as they were with audio records.

I was a little uncomfortable about the oral transmission part of the definition but if you think of this as a folklorists or collectors definition it makes perfect sense. They will be concerned with trying to capture the songs and tunes that were stored only in peoples heads. Once a person who had a store of songs in their head died then those songs might be lost unless they could be captured and a record made of the song - this was of course the concern of Sharp and his contemporaries and of other collectors since. Once the songs had been committed to some other "more permanent" medium they would not be lost if the only person who knew that song died. Anything that had been previously written down was not lost.

However as a singer, while the definition is useful, it is not the whole story.

Also there is the thorny issue of the Broadside Ballads and other written down popular music.

Rather than refer to "improving the definition" I think it might be better to talk about revising it to reflect changing circumstances. Like any definition it always has fuzzy edges and it should be revisited from time to time.