I think this thread is really important. As an artist who is far from a headliner I have to confess a certain exasperation with the 'headliners' who only do one concert and then go on their way. They're missing the best bits! If you examine a festival over a weekend you'll note that the dance teams provide the visible face (and work like hell for it) whilst the lower echelon acts provide the core, doing concert spots, leading singarounds, running workshops and playing/singing in sessions. That's the 'old school' way and I wouldn't want do anything else. But…when an artist takes the lions share of the festival artist budget and contributes nothing except their 'august presence' I kind of wonder whether this 'folk' thing has become just another facet of the commercial music scene and whether that is, in the long run, a good thing. My early mentors were the likes of Mike Waterson (an interior decorator) and Ian Manuel (a coalman). Back in the day nobody was expecting to make a living out of singing folk music, they had day-jobs. Should they now? Or is the commercialism, as Guest 999 says, '… unfortunate, but too often that's the way it is.'