"Thank you all for your responses - it's really interesting to hear how the internet in particular is playing a bigger role in broadcasting and selling folk music than i had thought (though i guess by posting online i'm inevitably speaking to a net-literate group)"

Careful,Lucy. Did you think we all spent our days toiling in the fields or deep-sea fishing? I'm just guessing, but I reckon folk music has an overwhelmingly white collar demographic (these days at least), and we live with the same influences and technologies as everyone else.