Do you remember when Sam Goody used to sell commercial single cassette tapes? You know, the cheap tapes that were somewhere between 99 cents and two dollars and had that hot new song with the instrumental usually on the back.

As a radio fiend growing up with a meager allowance, I often was too broke to buy the full album that could be easily be filled with duds, so I often opted for the single. Usually available from major-label releases, sometimes obscure singles could be found from independent labels promoting my favorite hip-hop fare of the week. I devoured the tapes and cherished the instrumentals with hopes I could use them one day when I hosted a radio show or became a big-name producer.

So here I am now, a college-radio DJ and editor of a music magazine, which means I can usually get whatever music I want or need with very little effort.

However, there are times when I am dying to hear that one song that has been running around in my head throughout my daily power lecture. If only Discount Records or the Exclusive Company still carried singles. If only.

Now, in the post-Napster era, the music industry and its henchman, the Recording Industry Association of American (RIAA), are out to implement a Marshall Plan-like initiative that would clean up the damage the facist regime that was Sean Fanning and his crude computer program, that blessed us loyal music fans with near-free music for a glorious nine months. That was the shock that shook the music world: An opportunity to stick it to the man with a DSL connection and a laptop. Poor students who had grown up with the commercial single could now download as many as they wanted at virtually no cost.

Napster came at the same time as the diminishing presence of commercial singles and an increase in demand. The average price of a CD was soaring to new heights and there was a fair amount of decent pop music on the market, causing fans to find an alternative. Labels now have simply stopped releasing commercial singles and thus probably shot themselves in the foot.

In an attempt to recoup their supposed “losses” over the last couple of years (statistics show that album sales have actually increased since the inception of Napster and other file-sharing websites), the bright lights that bring us music want to implement a system in which we, the consumers, must download and rent a song for a month, then buy it. I think the lease on my parents’ new Toyota is a better deal than that.

Imagine not listening to a song for a little while, then forgetting about it, then being inspired to listen to it again. You go to your computer and find that it is not there, like an old e-mail that has been deleted or lost in cyberspace. In fact, you may even have to buy a monthly package. Who were the marketing geniuses that came up with this one?

So here the music industry is at a fork in the road: Either figure out a way to make music more affordable and appease its customers or try to keep up with and try to stop the more computer-savvy renegades that are out to screw the industry. The recording industry is in a recession that hasn’t hit other forms of entertainment so hard, and now it must decide what it wants to do.

I’ll tell the industry one thing, though: Eliminating singles just sent me and an entire nation of music fans to our computers in search of that hot new song.