Last week, in the lead up to my birthday, I posted an offer of a free mp3 of any of my songs. I repeated this offer several times on my social media channels which have almost 17,000 followers. All people had to do was email me and tell me which song they would like and I would send them a free mp3 of that song.

Now I’m not the biggest artist in the world and I suspect if The Beatles, Taylor Swift or Drake had made a similar offer there would have been a lot more people asking for a free mp3. But what is worrying is just how few people took me up on my offer.

The inference is that you can’t even give your music away these days.

It seems that people don’t want music even when it’s free. Look at how many people complained when U2 sent every Apple user a free copy of their album Songs of Innocence. People were outraged that they were getting a free album by one of the world’s biggest bands.

It could be that people simply don’t listen to music that is stored on their phone, tablet or laptop and prefer to stream everything. It could also be that we’re cynical that anything free must be a scam. But, whatever the reason the simple fact is that virtually no-one wants your music for free. And I speak as someone who has over half a million streams on Spotify alone, not counting those on Apple Music, YouTube, Deezer etc.

The other fact is that I had more people taking the time to wish me a happy birthday than people wanting a free mp3 of one of my songs. Thank you everyone who took the time to wish me a happy birthday, it’s very kind of you, but didn’t you want a free song at the same time?