Throughout the book, the idea of music distribution and availability is a constant.

They came about because music itself, at least in how it made it into my life, and how it made it into the wider world, was also going through changes, in terms of how it was distributed and made available, and just how much of it there now was. So much music that there seemed to be less and less care about what was played, less commitment to the idea of quality, as a route to the sublime, as if it was all the same, because it was all in the same place. The route to the sublime had become routine. Abundance had led to a diminishing of specialness.