He mentions towards the end of the interview that in the old days he used to sign as many burned CD's as real ones. The interviewer asked him if he though that was stealing. His response is copied below, and I think it's both telling and true.
AV Club: You never felt like burning CDs was stealing?
Ben Folds: Yeah, I’ve always been fine with it; I let people know that right up front. I feel bad for record companies now. No matter what kind of karma they had coming to them, I still feel bad about how they have to scrap to make a living, and how many of my friends have been laid off. [...] It’s not a pretty place. But having said that, I also know how much I made from royalties from record sales alone. It’s not very much. Most artists would be surprised at how much money they make from selling records. So the question becomes “Hundreds of thousands of people will listen to your music, but they’ll be stealing it from your record company,” and you say, “Well, what does that mean to me?” Nothing. Really, nothing. That aspect of my business didn’t make that much, so I don’t care.Metallica said that they care, and maybe they were making more off of record sales, I don’t know. But all those artists who signed those petitions to stop people from stealing their music, well, maybe they should have checked to see how much they were making from royalties first. But it doesn’t bother me, I’d rather have the hundreds of thousands of people hear my music. [Laughs.] To me, having a record company is the way you look famous and important, to let people know that you’re sanctioned by “the man,” and when you go play gigs, it’s like “as seen on TV,” that kind of thing. But I know that stealing music has been bad for people, I’m not going to say I’m happy for it, but it’s not a bad thing for music. It’s a bad thing for the music industry. And those two things are different.
You can find the rest of the interview here.
