Richard, you are being obtuse and unfair, and I think it's fair to say, insulting. Not just to me but to everyone who has ever taken money for a performance, who has ever facilitated a performance, or who has paid to enjoy one.

This thread has been, in part, about value for money in the sale of music. The point is of course not that money has been taken, but that it is a factor in whether audience and indeed performer will (can) be there - and therefore able to play and be played to.

At the clubs you frequent no doubt money is not as issue, and I'm as aware as anyone of that value system, where it comes from and what it's importance is. I call those gatherings singarounds, (though even that word is open to various definitions, some of them very different to the meaning I'm groping for), and I would never seriously use a word like punter to describe the participants thereof. I might as a kind of slang, just as I might call my spot a gig, but I wouldn't do it on a web forum where choice of words matters.

I've not been taking about singarounds when I've talked about gigs or punters or fees etc.

This thread has always been about concerts. Though that has not stopped people wongly and unfairly applying singaround values to comments made by others about concerts.

We do have folk concerts in this country. Legally. And you have no right to criticise us for doing so. We have true concerts and also hybrid singaround/concerts and in both cases an ELEMENT of commerce applies. Sometimes of major importance, sometimes of minor - but it is there, and it does matter, for the preformer but also for the promoter who is taking the financial risk and the audience who are giving time and money for what they hope is a good experience.

I have been addressing that element. Not to set it above other issues, but because that element needs to be done well if it's to be done at all, and we all have much to learn from each other concerning it.

What you have to understand is that concerts also have a long and honourable history in this country, and though it may not be obvious to people of your belief system, here, commercial theories do apply and always have done. Not one model, but many - for many different types of event. And each model will contain some element of commerce. And if the artists and promoters who apply those systems are no good at it, then the model will fail. And there will be no concert. And if they fail often enough neither will be involved in concerts in future. And if there were no concerts at all, a huge amount of the music that people who take a pride in dismissing concerts enjoy in other forms would simply not exist.

You have been careful what you say but your implication is clear. You have never seen me perform, or met me, so you may not be aware of my passion and commitment to music. If you were I hope you'd not keep chipping in with suggestions that imply that I'm only in it for the money.

I'm in it for the music. But the music we love won't survive if we don't do the business part well, and then we'd be left with just the stuff that IS purely a product made for consumption.

To resent this honest transaction is unreasonable and in the long term dangerous.

Thank you

Tom