Now, at that time in my life [around 2008], it felt very much like, ‘OK. The record business is broken. The model is broken.’ I’d go through periods of having to look in the mirror and say, ‘Let’s see. I just made an album I spent a year working on. I turned it over to the record label to get manufactured. It leaked, and I’m online, just boiling furious, at fans who’re talking about how much they love this new album, that they just stole.’

And then I’d think, ‘Wait a minute. They’re not standing outside my house, bootlegging copies out the back of their van, y’know, to make money. They’re sharing their excitement about songs I’ve written, and music I’ve done. And they’re excited about it. And I’m pissed off at ‘em, because what? They didn’t wait until a month from now, when they’d have to drive to a record shop (if they can find one,) to buy a piece of plastic they don’t want, then rip it back to their computers, to…man, this sucks. Ok, something’s not right.’ Or they can buy it from iTunes at a lower bit quality, which at that time was also copy protected, which I was strongly against.

It becomes very clear, if you can remove the emotion from the equation, that the delivery system is broken. And the relationship between fans and artists and record labels is also broken.

Trent Reznor on the music industry  (via youremyguitarhero) —