What I don't get about the singer-songwriter types working in the standard "Dylan meets Broadway meets Nashville" idiom is how labelling themslves as "folk" makes any commercial sense. The folk music market is relatively small and somebody like Kathy Mattea has so little chance of getting a sale from somebody whose favourite idiom is that of Belle Stewart or Ole Bull that there just doesn't seem to be any point. Why do they do it?

I can kinda see the point of weelittledrummer's approach - just try to insult any potential competition into oblivion since you can't attract an audience for your work on your own merits (he probably slags off opera and hip-hop under other pseudonyms). But most singer-songwriters don't go all-out to be offensive. They just earnestly think we ought to be interested in them, for no imaginable reason. It's like a manufacturer of meat cleavers advertising in a vegan magazine.