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Let me talk you through the gadgetry on my desk. There's a laptop on which you can play CDs, receive all sorts of radio stations you've never heard of and steal music from the internet.

Then there's a CD player, should none of the Canadian west coast FM transmitters be playing what I want to hear at a particular moment. And there's a television which can play music with pictures or gospel chanting or hymns or any combination of musical notation not covered by the interweb.

In my sitting room I have much the same sort of arrangement, plus there's a record player which can play all my favourite songs, but with a selection of crackles and hisses that men with terrible pullovers and halitosis will tell you is "authentic" and "real".

In the car, I have a CD autochanger, a cassette player and a radio, and for those moments when I'm between my front door and the door of the car, I have a portable radio and CD Walkman.

So, really, it's impossible to conceive any situation anywhere in the world where I cannot avail myself of The Doobie Brothers. I even have Long Train Running as a ring tone on my phone, except when someone sends me a text: then it's China Grove.

This is not unusual. I think that all but the very poor have a similarly limitless access to music these days; so why, you may be wondering, it is so essential that we must all have an iPod now?