I don’t claim to be able to predict the future, but I do have a good deal of faith in the capacity for people to preserve and propagate culture.

It would be easy enough to despair about all of the recorded music that is locked away, out of reach – decaying in vaults because it’s neither commercially nor politically expedient to bring it to the light and allow people to hear it, researchers to study it, libraries to archive it and artists to use it as the springboard into new creative works – and I will continue to rail against that.

But I’d very much like to think that this is a temporary glitch in the main scheme of things. Generally speaking, I think sense tends to prevail in the long run.

We may have lost countless recordings that were only ever released on 78rpm records but now no longer exist in any way, shape or form.

There may be tens of thousands of releases that the record labels can’t digitise and make available because they don’t even know the details of the contracts that pertained to those particular recordings. Or where those contracts might be.

But ultimately, eventually, I can’t help but think the crisis might be noticed more widely. The fact that at least as many cultural treasures as were lost in the burning of the Alexandrian Library are currently being slowly burned because of the selfish and short-term interests of industry lobbyists whose current bottom line is considered more important than the collective cultural capital of our society is something that must, surely, warrant some attention and some action.

Meanwhile, we need to start shouting. The burning of the Alexandrian Library brought on the Dark Ages. And that was an accident. We could do without another one of those – especially one brought on deliberately in order to sustain a failing business model, and out of greed and commercial desperation.

I like to think we’re collectively smarter than that.