On the day Luciano Pavarotti died in Modena, Steve Jobs launched his "iPod touch" in California. When a singer dies, a light goes out in heaven, but Apple has ways of keeping its reflection burning. Pavarotti's fans may no longer swim, with Shelley, "upon the liquid waves of thy sweet singing", but they can sit in Starbucks and download him from iTunes. And his record company can still make money.
Or can it? Two themes have dominated the entertainment business this summer. One is the collapsing profits on recordings, the other the extraordinary revival of live performance. Companies such as EMI and Warner have seen CD sales plummet by 23% this year, in the face of a rise in far less profitable downloads, pirating and file-sharing. The same applies to other art forms available on the web. Any teenager worth his salt can summon The Bourne Ultimatum out of the ether.
The essence of the web is that it is open. Producers may erect subscription walls, paid-for downloads and other ways of charging for their work. But whatever is digitised is vulnerable to the nerd in the attic. As the Chinese and Russians have shown by testing "e-wars" on their enemies, and ID card hackers will show in time, there is no such thing as a secure online computer. It is a contradiction in terms.
This technology has reduced the marginal cost of communicating to zero. Why buy a CD or a DVD when you can download for nothing - at least if you log off fast enough? Who needs to see and hear opera stars in person when their notes are hanging in the air, awaiting only an iPod touch? Every year some e-novation ensures wider access, better quality and vaster library back-up. I have reached the point where I prefer to play CDs because it limits the agony of choice.
By squeezing the communication gap between artist and audience, the internet has drastically cut costs. The concept of the "long tail" - selling less of more in any given market - has reduced the need for economies of scale. This makes it easier for artists to reach and satisfy minorities without the need for intermediaries such as record labels, film distributors or television companies. (We have yet to see whether the same applies to newspapers.) Whereas once broadcasting enabled nation to speak unto nation, it now enables niche to speak unto niche.
This is ostensibly liberating. Markets shrink and multiply and audiences can be better targeted. But as costs dive, so does income. The protection of copyright is undermined and the artist suffers alongside the corporation. As David Bowie famously said in 2002, music would soon be "like running water and electricity", available cheap and everywhere. Once the song has left the singer it is, to all intents and purposes, free as air. On what, then, will the singer live?
Pavarotti was the answer. We wanted him in person and would pay fantastic sums to hear him. This year we - or some people - wanted Barbra Streisand in person, along with Genesis, the Stones, Spinal Tap and the Who. Streisand, at £100-£800, could out-charge any opera singer and sell out in 20 minutes. Tickets for the Stones cost £150-£495, and their recent worldwide tour grossed more than any in history, an estimated £220m. The Police have been induced to reform, and similar rumours surround Led Zeppelin and even the Spice Girls. The preferred City perk is now a rock concert ticket rather than a Glyndebourne box.
This is not just a revival of a nostalgia genre. Demand for live concerts overall is rising by some 10% a year. As the music critic Robert Sandall points out in the latest edition of Prospect magazine, you could buy Madonna's entire recorded output "for less than half what it cost to see her perform at Wembley Arena". Prince makes no bones about it. Once he toured to promote his albums; now he gives away albums to promote his tours. An artist's percentage share of a concert ticket can be four times the royalty on a CD.
Nor is this phenomenon confined to concerts - though they are bidding to outdo football in stadium revenues. Where weekend festivals were once the preserve of hippies and trespassers, they are now an established industry. The basic ticket to Glastonbury this year was £145, yet 137,000 sold in less than two hours. There are now some 450 music festivals, supplementing more sober arts and literary events.
No self-respecting municipality is without its annual parade of trilling sopranos, aspiring quartets and authors in search of sales. While few of these events make money, their popularity suggests a suppressed demand for live entertainment. Edinburgh, the world's biggest arts festival, broke all records this year with 1.7m tickets for the fringe alone. London's refurbished dome, O2, has 150 concerts already booked.
Just as the invention of photography was said to spell the death of painting, so the advent of cinemas, television and records was said to mean the death of live events. Artists would perform only to cameras and microphones. The internet in turn was predicted to supplant cinemas, television and records, not to mention bookshops, newspapers and all forms of print on paper. Swathes of middle men would disappear, as did coachmen with the coming of the train.
It has not been so. The internet has lowered start-up costs and eased market penetration. It has aided book sales. Rather than replacing live performance, it has promoted it. In his iconoclastic history of science, The Shock of the Old, David Edgerton warned readers not to confuse changes in technological opportunity with changes in human needs. The internet cannot force us to change what we want.
For all the glittering array of micro-technology, most of us still rise, dress, eat, work and play with much the same requirements as we did half a century ago. Electronic technology has made it easier and cheaper to acquire a better quality of life. But what we want to do with it is remarkably constant. E-topia has altered the means but offered no new message.
I find it deeply encouraging that live performance can command ever-rising prices. It shows a yearning for the real over the secondhand. From Glastonbury to Edinburgh, from Hay to Wembley, Britons are escaping their screens to spend the value released by the internet on something that electronics can never replace: human contact and the personal services that contact involves, such as holidays, travel, restaurants, clubs and festivals.
After days spent gazing into the depths of cyberspace, my brain wants relief. It does not find it in another screen at home, alone or with headphones clapped over the ears. Humans are social animals and crave society. The popularity of YouTube and MySpace is not as substitutes for social contact but as ways of finding it. Similarly, live performance offers not just the thrill of the real but the opportunity to congregate with like-minded people.
The internet has not suppressed demand for "old-fashioned" cultural experiences but liberated it and aided those ready to meet it. The message of this summer is that technology may propose but people will still dispose.
