Yeah. I've never seen any solid stats, and I hate using my gut as an information source, but my gut tells me that piracy has been a much larger help to artists. I've seen a few news articles that imply it. Piracy is a threat to labels, but really, when a musician can grab Garage Band and a few thousand bucks of hardware and publish his own music... do we need labels?

What I find amusing is this argument I've heard a few times coming from the labels that goes along the lines of that we need their expertise in order to produce and discern the "quality" music... Because they do such a good job of that usually.