The future of our music depends on ir being taken seriously. by the potential listener, by the media, by those who control the purse-strings of the art world, by the student.... by society as a whole.
Shakespeare can survive and thrive without majority popular support, Dickens will continue to be read for centuries, though I have only met one person (Walter Pardon) who read all his novels.

No it doesn't, Jim. It depends on it being good. Both Shakespeare and Dickens were popular in their own time. They are now certainly taken seriously by some but I suspect that the majority of Elizabethan theatre goers (can I call the Globe- trotters? :-) ) and most readers of pop-lit in Victorian times treated them as they were intended; popular entertainment. They have survived because they are good and have moved with the times. How many of Shakespeares plays and Dickens's books now have modern interpretations? Yet the originals still survive and go from strength to strength. It will be the same with folk music. The good will survive, the crap will be flushed and so it should be.

DtG