Streams are made of this: will digital platforms change our musical memories?

I also know that my experiences were very different to his. At his age, I had to hang around the radio for hours or wait until Top of the Pops every Thursday, hoping that a song I loved would appear. These days, my son just asks Alexa.

I know why it matters. I was five when my father died, suddenly and unexpectedly, in January 1984. My new book begins with the last moment that I saw him. I was at our front door saying goodbye, being reminded by Dad that he had set me a task: I had to find out what No 1 was in the Top 40 charts.

This would be revealed to the world while Dad was in hospital waiting for a hip operation to ease his ankylosing spondylitis. I never got to tell him the answer as he died two days later from a complication in the early stages of the operation. He was only 33. Pipes of Peace by Paul McCartney made it to the top, a song that still sings loudly and beautifully to me today.

The closest I got to this was making mixtapes in my mid-teens: a laborious process involving a double tape deck and much more planning involving controlling the order of songs. When I was in my mid-20s, my mother found a box of cassettes that included a similar tape made by my father. The clunk of record and play buttons being pressed together between songs by Kim Wilde and Roxy Music still hit my heart like a hammer.

I also realise that when I was growing up, I was allowing music to be another parent. Then I look at my playlist and see songs by Self Esteem, Yazz and Frankie Valli, songs that my son first heard because of me, Dexys Midnight Runners and Stevie Wonder that were first played by his dad, and others from his uncles, aunties and grandparents. Music is already providing him with family.

The Sound of Being Human: How Music Shapes Our Lives by Jude Rogers is published by White Rabbit at £9.99. Buy it for £9.29 at guardianbookshop.com