"Don't know that many bands now that do actually make money lugging vast numbers of CDs and merchandise about. For the music, streaming and downloading seems to be more the norm."

That's certainly not my experience. Younger audiences may prefer to download, but older people who make up a lot of folk audiences still prefer a physical product. Streaming a track on Spotify pays about $0.005, so unless you're a big name attracting millions of streams it takes a while to amount to anything. Of course digital is an important part of marketing, but it takes several months to achieve the same as a sale of a single CD. And until 3D printers become more widespread, it's difficult to download a Tshirt.

VAT is complicated as there are different rules for physical products and digital. Because we're below the VAT threshold we don't charge VAT on CD sales, but VAT is charged on digital sales - fortunately the digital vendors handle this.

For us, the cost and bureaucracy of having to make payments up-front would now discourage us from taking CDs abroad, instead we would encourage audiences to download or purchase online