Potential sales are not actual sales though are they? Surely this is the point here; also that blogging might actually work in favour of the artist.

I came into this thread with an advocation of Woven Wheat Whispers as the only fully integrated on-line folk label and such likely to be of interest to the blogging generation. I've been using WWW from the off, often to basically blog myself (see Shibboleth Bonny at Morn, Eleanor's Visceral Tomb Lady, Hap Yer Lingcan, Ploughmyth Orbis Mysterium etc.) featuring material gratis that otherwise wouldn't get heard at all. But then again, I'm more interested in recorded medium as a means of documenting process rather than making the commercial products that sit rather awkwardly with the ethos of a 'folk' music.

As I've already said, quite often the unofficial legacy of an artist is ultimately of greater interest (and value) than the official one; this is something no artist or record company should ever have control over, but rather the consequence of the passion people feel about the music - especially those artists who are dead and gone, which we'll all be one day.

Third Ear Band bootlegs anyone???