said by jester121 :

It's kind of funny to see Reznor receive the adoration of the masses for sticking it to "the man" (i.e. evil record labels). We're talking about a guy who is already very wealthy, poised to make even more money -- and rightly so. He creates music that people want enough to trade their money in for it.

However, when it's a corporation doing the same thing, all we hear about is "oh, the greed", "those filthy suits", and all the other nonsense.

Wonder if the next NIN concert will be $10 a seat as well?

And what about bands that don't already have millions in the bank and existing royalty structures for residual income? There's a reason why musicians have signed with labels and promoters over the years, and there are plenty of wealthy musicians out there, so obviously some part of it works.

I'm not saying companies don't frequently do idiotic things, but it's not because of their inherent evil-ness -- it's because they're often run by idiots.

said by Boogeyman :

Now that thats out of the way, Trent Reznor is a fucking hypocrite. A few years back I found a torrent of all of his videos and a few interviews, in one interview he was asked what he thought about file sharing and he stated that he thought it wasnt right, and that he believed it equated to stealing from the artists. Sadly, I cannot remember the name of the video, it was only like a 3min quick backstage interview, but maybe someone else might know of it. I would like to believe that he was just as misinformed as the general populace was about filesharing at the time, and that he finally "saw the light", but I think its really that he saw he didnt need the labels anymore, so he just figured in cutting out the middle man, not because he wanted to "stick it to the man", as some others have opined as well.