I hope that my friends in the music world don’t take this the wrong way. But when I saw the headline in The Times on Monday – “Music sales at lowest since records began” – I let out a small cheer. Actually, it turned out that the headline was (how shall I put this?) not entirely pristine in its accuracy. Sales of recorded music are still far higher than they were in the 1970s, which was certainly after “records began”. What’s true is that they seem to be plunging more dramatically than a diva’s décolletage – by 11 per cent in a year, if the worst forecasts are to be believed.

This news has understandably caused molto agitato anguish in the music world. Especially since it appears that the growth in downloads won’t come anywhere near compensating for the slump in “old-fashioned” CD sales – not this year, and not any time in the foreseeable future.

Indeed, the rise of the iPod and other digital music players appears to have made prospects for the recording industry worse, not better. First, it means that punters can choose the individual tracks that they fancy from the latest albums, rather than buying the whole caboodle. That’s much cheaper for them, but much less profitable for the musicians and their record companies.

And, secondly, it reinforces the “I know what I like, and I like what I know” tendency that has such a stultifying effect on intellectual curiosity. Once you have stocked your iPod with your 5,000 all-time fave ditties, why do you need anything else to while away your commuting or jogging hours? That, at least, seems to be the mind-set of millions of music lovers.

If the record companies were fighting this enervating trend by offering brilliant new material performed by brilliant new musicians, they might stand a chance of recovering their lost sales. But, incredibly, most of them seem to be doing the opposite: obsessing about how to repackage (yet again) their whiskery back-catalogues, while whingeing that the Government won’t rewrite the copyright laws (yet again) in their favour.

In short, they are in a hell of a pickle. So why did I – someone who lives, breathes and eats music – utter that small cheer? The answer is that I don’t believe that the imminent implosion of this complacent and sometimes corrupt industry signifies the demise of music. On the contrary, I think that it is triggering music’s rebirth. Evidence? If music were dying, I would see empty halls, theatres and arenas in my reporting travels round Britain. But I don’t. To misquote the immortal Fats Waller, the joints are jumpin’. From Glyndebourne to Glastonbury, from the gloriously restored Royal Festival Hall to the grungiest rock clubs of Camden Town, from the sedate Wigmore Hall to sprawling Wembley, people are flocking to hear music performed live.

And it’s that last word which holds the key, isn’t it? The music is live. As in “being created there and then, before your very eyes”. As in unique and authentic, rather than mass-produced and faked in a studio. As in “it could all go pear-shaped on the night, and that’s rather thrilling”.

Don’t get me wrong. After 120 years of electronically recorded music, I don’t think that the world is suddenly going to renounce the pleasures and convenience of being able to summon, with the flick of a mouse, almost any song ever written, and almost any great performer who ever drew breath. But I do believe that the very ubiquity of recorded music has, in a paradoxical way, dulled our interest in recordings. Now we crave the authentic deal: the live experience. We want to sit in the same arena as our heroes. We want to see if they can cut the mustard when there is no chance of doing a retake.

And most of all, we want to share the experience with other people – because there is nothing more thrilling in life (well, almost nothing) than being part of a vast crowd that is utterly transfixed by a display of genius. Human beings are sociable creatures on the whole – and we enjoy our culture most deeply when we imbibe it in a social context. That’s the one thing the gimlet-eyed visionaries of the 1990s forgot when they predicted that we would soon get all the art and entertainment we needed piped into our own homes.

But does the plight of the recording industry point to a much bigger and broader change? In short, is our love-affair with the microchip, the internet and all those digital gizmos that clutter up our homes starting to flicker and wane? Does anyone now “surf the net” for fun, except pimply teenagers, weird geeks and lonely men in search of pornographic thrills? Aren’t we all a bit tired of walking around with our ears permanently wired to an iPod and our minds cocooned in an aural comfort blanket, instead of immersing our senses in the invigorating sights and sounds of real life?

I think cultural historians may look back on the six or seven years either side of 2000 as a period of aberration, when people temporarily became obsessed with technology and forgot that the most intoxicating thing in human existence is our ability to communicate face to face. We are starting to emerge from that rather dreary tunnel now, I believe. We won’t dump the technology. It’s too useful. But we will control it, rather than letting it control us.

Meanwhile, if you see a bunch of dejected-looking musicians crying into their pints, do give them a collective hug and reassure them that the collapsing profits of EMI or Warner don’t necessarily mean the end of civilisation as we know it. After all, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Wagner, Tchaikovsky and Handel all managed to survive without the help of Mr Edison’s invention. And write the odd good tune, too.

Tour de Londres est magnifique

How wonderful to see the Tour de France cyclists pelting through the centre of London at the weekend – and this year, we are assured, with not so much as a whiff of wacky baccy among the lot of them! I only wish that they had been routed along the North London streets that humble cyclists like me have to negotiate when we are huffing and puffing to work each morning. You can bet that, with the eyes of the world on them, Mayor Ken would have had the potholes mended in a flash.

Still, the Tour de Londres was a marvellously entertaining event. What can we Londoners give the French in return? Do you think they would take the 2012 Olympics?

Historical eats

The celebrity historian Andrew Roberts has been writing a riveting column called My Week in the magazine Country Life. I’m amazed that he found the time. On Monday, he tells us, he attended a lavish party at the Serpentine Gallery followed by dinner with Lord Weidenfeld. On Tuesday he had a splendid lunch with an American politician followed by dinner at the swish Lanesborough Hotel, hosted by the think tank Policy Exchange. Wednesday was comparatively dull on the epicureal front: just a late-night supper with Tina Brown and Sir Harold Evans. But Thursday? “To Lord and Lady Stevens’s house in Portland Place for a dinner”. Friday seems not to have happened, but the weekend saw Roberts going “down to Turville for a delicious Sunday lunch with the historian Sir Alistair Horne”.

Incredible. Has any columnist ever consumed so much free grub in the course of a magazine article? No wonder that Roberts’s latest book is called The History of the English Eating Peoples. Well, something like that, anyway.

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