Luke Friend sings I Will Wait by Mumford and Sons

The X Factor has been around for the past 10 years and only in recent years has there been more versatile and not so "mainstream" singers.
This is an example from this years X Factor.

Luke Friend has been one of this years "underdogs" of the competition. He has been consistently good, but never outstanding. However he is one of the very few contestants who has the ability to completely change a pop song to make it sound a lot more like his sort of style. Luke has played his guitar multiple times on the show and more often than not he has changed his given song into a more indie/folk sounding song.

In this particular example, Luke Friend has taken a Mumford & Sons classic (who I looked at for my research) and performed it to such a high standard that he had 3 out of the 4 judges on their feet.
This example supports my point that not many people know much about folk music but that it is becoming much more popular as it is now appearing on programmes like The X Factor. As it is becoming more popular , there will be more of a demand for it to be on TV. So in order for The X Factor to stay current and up to date, they need to gratify the needs of their audience by giving them more of what they want.

This particular show raked in an audience of 8.22 million, meaning that this genre of music would have been exposed to that many people which also means that it would get a lot more attention if these people liked what they heard and saw. And these viewing figures do not take into account the secondary audience that would have also been watching. So the final rating would have been much higher, meaning that folk music could get a lot more attention.