I think that a lot of landlords still rely on the regular customers, the ones that come in every day and stay for a while. I'm thinking of two particular pubs in the town I used to live in where a group of folkies tried to start a regular session.

In both pubs the regulars really didn't want this intrusion and I don't think, for them, that the 'don't listen to it approach' was going to work. This was their local pub, they were used to drinking there, without interruption, as they saw it, and a load of 'idiots', as we were once called, coming in and drowning out the muzak did not suit.

One pub managed by persuading the regulars to drink in the other bar the night that the folk session was on, the other stopped allowing the session.

In the USA a session that I sometimes get to had a problem, for a while, with the kitchen staff who did not like the folk music and countered by playing a radio close by, banging pots and pans and talking loudly. Looks like there has been a change of staff as the problem seems to have gone away.