Next month marks the 18th anniversary of Spotify’s UK launch, an occasion that will inevitably be greeted by a tuneless chorus of doom from the cultural establishment. We’ll be treated to performative angst from all those who view the streaming giant as a corporate monster cannibalising musical art.  But for those of us with a functioning memory, this grievance misses a blindingly obvious reality: Spotify is one of the genuine marvels of modern civilization. 

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How Beefeater changed Britain – and why it died

When I was growing up, a music collection was a luxury only for posh folk. I knew no family with more than a handful of LPs. Maybe 100 tracks were available per household at most. Teenagers couldn’t afford high street records, so my own early musical universe was my parents’ few Val Doonican and Perry Como albums. A friend’s dad had a Johnny Cash LP we all treasured. 

As I aged into increased musical desperation, I rigged up a portable mono cassette recorder to capture highlights of Sunday night radio chart shows, usually with frustrating fragments of DJ’s introductions. This was the soundtrack to my later teens, cruising Devon lanes at the wheel of my mother’s Morris........

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