Jim Carroll is correct The Tradition is "about history and preservation". This I believe is a very valuable task. This is essentially an academic   exercise and as such will only ever be accessed by other academics and a vanishingly small percentage of the wider population.
However, this thread is addressing the real world of performers and audiences.
I note Jim Carroll passing interesting comments upon the real world in an article in
"Living Tradition - Issue 36 Opinion
Jim Carroll & Pat Mackenzie"
Audiences are changing in response to their changing environment and folk/traditional performers have to change, particularly if it is their means of making a living.
After all the one of the driving forces behind the first and second folk revivals was the fact that the singing tradition was dying out – changing times perhaps?