Surely part of your desire to sing is to be paid but also to expand you following, get more employment and sell cds etc.....

How can anyone continue to perform where the audience is limited by excessive profit taking resulting in rip off prices.

Yes people deserve to make a profit but when costs are high not so many people will be able to conveniently afford to hear you. So not being concerned about profit taking is shooting yourself in the foot and that will be career limiting.

Yes....records of harper conventions and many folk gatherings through the centuries strange that you dont know about them. Read some of the nineteenth century accounts. Celtic music has been performed in public settings even large royal halls for thousands of years. No electricity no port a pots.

How did we become so dependent upon such things- and time is now to roll much of it back.

Conrad