50 Cent Is the Latest Artist to Understand the Economics of Music

More and more musicians seem to be recognizing what fans have been trying to tell them since Napster first came on the scene nearly a decade ago: It’s not file sharing that hurts the music business, it’s treating your fans badly that hurts the business.

We’ve been seeing more and more musicians recognize this over the past few months, and the latest to join the pack is Curtis James Jackson III, better known as 50 Cent. In an interview, he noted that while file sharing may hurt record labels, it doesn’t seem to hurt artists or any other part of the music business: “What is important for the music industry to understand is that this really doesn’t hurt the artists.” Read the rest of this post