The Butt Ugly Weblog

File sharing helps not-so-well known artists

From The Long Tail:

"David Blackburn, a Harvard PhD student, on the economics of P2P file-sharing concludes that it does indeed depress music sales overall. But the effect is not felt evenly. The hits at the top of the charts lose sales, but the niche artists further down the popularity curve actually benefit from file-trading."

Makes sense. File sharing is just like radio play: you get more exposure.