Rob Sheridan on the Lost Joy of Music Piracy and Nine Inch Nails

The lost joy of music piracy

I recall how downloading leaked tracks of Nine Inch Nails radicalized me into a music pirate, eventually leading me to work with Trent Reznor. We realized the industry was failing fans by making music too expensive, so we embraced piracy as a distribution model. By releasing albums like The Slip for free, we proved that collecting an audience directly was more valuable than traditional sales, a lesson the streaming era still struggles to fully appreciate.

"It was the most complete and most efficient music distribution model the world has ever known, and I would gladly pay a large monthly fee for any legal music service of the same level."