If You Won't Sell Me What I'm Willing To Buy, Don't Get Mad When I Steal It

I'm the ONE person you know who listens to house (a.k.a. club) music. Well, I mean someone has to, otherwise, why would they make it? I like some music that's actually made for the clubs, but moreso, I love dance remixes of pop songs. Back in the 90s, this was easy, because they released singles of almost every song with the remixes on them, but then record companies were all, "We have to stop putting out singles! People aren't buying our sucky albums!" Hey, try maybe putting more than one or two good songs on them and maybe people would feel justified spending $15. It's this same thinking that resulted in Napster and pirating in the first place.

The nice thing about iTunes, is that I can buy most songs I want for .99 or $1.29. Occasionally, they pull that "Available by album only" nonsense, in which case I usually just pass, so THERE! But with dance mixes, it's still hard to get them. SOMETIMES they are available on iTunes, but not that often, AND they are hard to find when they do come out. I was delighted about a year ago, when I found another site called Masterbeat.com (which would easily be misunderstood as being a completely different type of site altogether, if you get what I'm saying), which catered to dance music listeners and initially offered a lot of mixes you couldn't get on iTunes or anyplace else. But then it went downhill... they now include just regular music, which I can get on Amazon or iTunes, so why clutter up this site with all of that?

So to get the music I wanted, traditionally, I was stuck either buying expensive import singles for like $12 (which doing the math was like $12 PER SONG!) or VINYL... PROMO VINYL, meaning they sent it directly to clubs and you couldn't buy it! So I had to buy them on eBay. I paid like $50 and had to snipe-bid at the last minute, to get the dance mixes of "I Want It That Way!" AND I got an angry email from the little girl I outbid, saying she was crying her eyes out! I wrote her back, saying if she ever contacted me again, I'd report her to eBay and get her... ahem, her mom's account shut down. She DID contact me again, but it was an apology. I know what you're thinking, but I don't care if that makes me a dick. I was a grown up and had my own money to spend and the eBay skillz to get what I wanted. I don't care what some sniveling brat wants. She's not my kid. That 12" is sitting in my basement now and is probably warped. Still... kinda worth it just for the story.

Oh and regarding import singles, I usually bought them as a last resort if I couldn't get the remix any other way, from a site called Perfectbeat.com, and in case you didn't know, I LOATHE buying CDs. I mean, how completely worthless! I copy them to my computer and "Hey, look at this shiny coaster!" Just what I need, more clutter. (Once again, $12 PER SONG!!! That's just how much I like dance music, that I paid it!)

And Perfectbeat was slow as hell. By the time I got the CDs, the songs would be old! I recently ordered a few CDs to get the remixes I wanted and they just kept not shipping them and not shipping them, so in frustration, I did a Google search and found a blog that had like EVERY dance mix of every pop song from the last two years... for FREE! A lot of it was crap I'd already overpaid for, but some was stuff I hadn't been able to acquire before, so for like a week, I've been d.l.ing the shit out of these songs. It's like the glory days of Napster all over again!

And I totally don't feel bad about it one bit, because... I mean, I was perfectly willing to PAY for this stuff! I have paid! $12 per Import! I mean... $50 for the BACKSTREET BOYS!!! There's $50 you'll never see, record companies! Why won't you just make what I want available?! Oh well... who needs you! Don't whine to me about piracy and poor sales, when I'm willing to buy stuff you won't sell me! Screw you!