To give an example for guest Russ..a fellow pro musician friend of mine who is classed as minority music and therefore does it all himself for a discerning audience, was shown a site that had 42 of his tracks for free download. We worked out that he had invested just over £20,000 of his hard earned money to make these tracks available to people to take for no return to him.
Now, if this was washing machines, eventually there would be no one manufacturing them.
The same applies to all things within the arts. Support them or they will die. Although I know there are people in the folk world who believe it to be intrinsically wrong that someone should devote their life to developing their talent to the full and making a living from their skills, I'm not one of them. I give thanks each day for ther writers, songwriters, musicians, actors etc who give my life some meaning and I don't begrudge them a penny for their efforts.