Right guitar teacher here been playing for 50 years and I teach flamenco - classical - fingerpicking and pick styles. There are a lot of strummy guitar singer songwriters out there but there are fingerpickers as well Check out my former pupil who is as good as most Monkton Wylde aka Luke Brown. I have seen fingerpickers in blues and acoustic nights and some in folk clubs over the years. The standard is no different now than it was. People like Wizz Jones - Carthy - Renbourn - Duck ~Baker - Jansch - have always been exceptional because they put the work in. In the late 60s I was blown away by a gent in Leicester called Mark Newman who never became well known and a pick player called Thaddeus Kay who was very good indeed They put the work in

A question what keeps an audience interested A good voice - a personality - good material and the ability to sustain the audience's interest over a set or two. That takes a lot and a lot of experience as well