I got an e-mail today from someone who asked (albeit politely) to send him an MP3 of a song I’d previously posted here but taken down—I don’t keep songs online for longer than a couple of days, so the link was dead.  Apparently, according to this person, “it is nearly impossible for people to locate a working MP3” of the song he was asking for.

Okay, people, here’s the deal:  I post a song or two every now and then for your enjoyment and in order to expose you to new artists.  I am not a free download service. If I post a song that you happen to like, that’s great, and if you want more, I can point you in the direction of several online and realtime music stores where you can buy their albums and support the artists.  If I post a song that you wanted and you missed it because I took it down, tough noogies—especially if you simply found the dead link because you were doing a Google search to download the MP3.  If you’re that hard up for the song and don’t want to buy the whole album, there’s always the iTunes Music Store, where you can cough up a buck and buy just that track.  (Ironically, when I told the person to look for it on iTunes, they claimed it wasn’t available—but I somehow managed to find the track available for sale in less than a minute.)

Downloads are offline, and I will refrain from posting new songs for a while until I am no longer pissed off about this situation.  If anyone is upset about that, I will gladly supply the e-mail address of the person who ruined it for you so you can go yell at them.