I have always resisted the term "Music Industry". Because of the analogy it assumes with industrial scale mass production in factories, it is a very misleading model of how music is created and disseminated.
"Music Business" is the term that I prefer- though actually what the majority of practitioners are involved in is a network of loosely related, very small and one person businesses, and this network is attached even more loosely to an even bigger group of hobbyists.
My main source of new music and new artists is via the internet. I listen to Mike Harding via a subscription to the podcast, but most of my listening is as a judge on online music stages like "Just Plain Folks" and "Ourstage".
To use a term from my youth, it is only a small majority of the artists on these sites who "have gone professional".
Even fewer are rank amateurs or beginners.
This exposure to other peoples' categorisation, accounts for my conviction that the definition of Folk is a very wide one indeed. Just today my listening has ranged from Hillbilly to Gypsy Jazz.
Cheers
Dave
P.S Feel free to use my refutation of the term "industry" in your assignment. I always gave marks to people who did!