Attachment theory

Who better to investigate and reflect on whether streaming is fundamentally altering our "musical memories" than Jude Rogers, someone who has written personally and passionately about the attachments that we develop (especially in our youth) to particular songs?

Rogers' concern is one that I feel keenly myself: that in the age of Spotify et al "music is no longer rare and precious, but something we take for granted". As the mother of a young son, she wonders "why I spend so much time worrying whether his experiences are as profound as mine and why it feels like it matters?"

She's effectively already answered her own question: when music has been such a cornerstone in your own life - a source of comfort, support, revelation and joy - why would you not want your child to feel the same deep connection?

What Rogers has come to realise, though, is that her son's relationship with music is not necessarily weaker or more passive simply because of the means by which he consumes it - it's simply different. She calls upon various academics to shoot down the grumblings of fogies like myself; they dismiss our anxieties as fuelled by generational "it-were-better-in-my-day" nostalgia and emphasise that the ubiquitous availability of songs may even strengthen the bond that people form with music. Perhaps, speculates Catherine Loveday, "our musical memories will just become even more robust and feel even more powerfully attached to our sense of who we are".

All of which probably won't stop me from sliding back into griping about miniscule attention spans and blathering on about the importance of treating artists with respect by listening to albums in their entirety - but at least now I should know better.