Mmmm - not sure about that Ray - the club where I suffered that closed many years ago - the ones I have been to more recently stick to the two or three floor spots. I can imagine a lot of people like myself would never go back there - there were four of us there that night so they lost four potential customers for future gigs

Another issue can be MC's hogging the limelight - this very rarely happens and most club MCs are excellent in my experience but I do know of one who was alienating the audience by insisting on performing a couple of songs each half preventing other (almost always always better) floor singers performing - most nights half of the audience were out in the bar for a good portion of the night to avoid him. The club dealt with this after one particularly bad episode but I'd suggest that such issues, combined with the greater number of alternative sources of music and the loss of venues, has as much to do with the loss of clubs as does Jim's concerns about folk music 'not being heard' at them