Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor recently criticised video hosting site YouTube and told Billboard that it is "built off the back of stolen content". 

Reznor said: "Personally, I find YouTube's business to be very disingenuous. It is built on the backs of free, stolen content and that's how they got that big. I think any free-tiered service is not fair."

He added: "It's making their numbers and getting them a big IPO and it is built on the back of my work and that of my peers. That's how I feel about it. Strongly. We're trying to build a platform that provides an alternative — where you can get paid and an artist can control where their [content] goes."

A spokesperson for YouTube has now hit back at his remarks in a statement issued to the NME, in which they denied Reznor's claims: "The overwhelming majority of labels and publishers have licensing agreements in place with YouTube to leave fan videos up on the platform and earn revenue from them."

"Today the revenue from fan uploaded content accounts for roughly 50 percent of the music industry's YouTube revenue. Any assertion that this content is largely unlicensed is false. To date, we have paid out over $3 billion to the music industry – and that number is growing year on year."

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Watch Reznor in action here: