"matt, if you're even thinking of suggesting that I might prefer Tony Rose & Tony Capstick dead...

The B*lm*r situation makes things complicated. Nic Jones's first two albums have been reissued on CD - I've got one of them. The selling price is low, the packaging is cheap & I believe the disc itself is a CD-R (it doesn't play on my 1990s CD player); it's a fair bet that, as before, the royalties aren't going to the artist. So if I owe Nic the royalty for my downloaded copy of Nic Jones, presumably I also owe him in respect of my 'legit' Ballads and songs and my tape-of-a-tape Noah's Ark trap.

(I have a plan for dealing with this situation, involving Mollie Music and PayPal. If anyone can find a way to bung a few quid back through time to Tony Capstick, I'm all ears. And if they can dry the bugger out and get him singing again, that'd be good too. Sorry, I've been watching too much Doctor Who.)"

I was very careful to write "surviving" a few times in my posts!
I'm not suggesting you'd prefer anyone dead! It's just that I've read a few comments on the THTM website where it almost seems as if they prefer their "lost folkies" to be as lost as humanly possible.

It sounds like you know much more about the ins and outs of Nic Jones' back catalogue than I do. My attitude is simply that it really doesn't matter where you get whichever album from; it doesn't stop you from going to the website of Nic Jones or Dave Burland to see if there's a contact address to post a fiver to (or something). Put money in the hat. In my opinion, what you 'owe' someone is what you feel they've given you is worth. I like the busker model.