Music used to belong to the pirates. And it may have been better off that way: now the platforms they inspired are robbing musicians in broad daylight. In the early 2000s, a global internet underground of music nerds (compliment) faced police raids and the wrath of record label lawyers to maintain the vastest archives of music ever assembled. Online strangers, equally in love with sound and infuriated by the industry’s cash-extracting CD prices, upheld these meticulous systems, like sonic Alexandrias hiding behind IYKYK urls. One of those faceless filesharers was Rob Sheridan, longtime creative director of Nine Inch Nails, who welcomed Trent Reznor into the digital oasis Reznor would later call “the world’s greatest record store.” “I downloaded a whole bunch of albums that I never had the opportunity to try because every album was an 18 dollar investment,” Sheridan tells us. “That kind of radicalized me, and I became a fan of so much more music. [Working with Nine Inch Nails], I got brought in and we were being flown to New York, the label was taking us out to these expensive dinners and paying for everything—top notch hotels, everyone had private cars and drivers. There was so much money going around, and it wasn’t the artists who were rolling in cash. I remember one of my first comments to Trent [Reznor] was, ‘Now I see why CDs cost 18 dollars.’” Read the full feature, written by @edendasilva, here: pigeonsandplanes.com/read/mu…