"the study analyzed the Billboard Top 200 charts -- reflecting weekly album sales -- from 1991 to 2000. Over the 10-year period, they found a 31.5 percent increase in the number of different artists on the Top 200, indicating that more new artists are hitting the charts than ever before, pushing established musical acts from the charts or keeping them from hitting the charts at all.
The biggest change occurred from 1998 to 2000, when there was a 10 percent increase in the number of different artists who hit the Billboard 200.
The researchers link the trend to rapid growth in the number of Internet users -- from 3 million to 116.7 million -- over the past 10 years and the emergence of music-sharing services such as Napster, which has led to widespread online music sampling and piracy. "