Plastic People, BBC 6 Music and The Asian Network all share a faith in music that’s outside of – even ahead of – the mainstream, and they exist to bring that music to a wider audience. Institutions like these are of course vital to the health of musical creativity and innovation in this country and worldwide. Moreover, the threat of their demise is a symptom of the trend that sees music slowly transforming from a collective activity that builds and benefits societies, stoking the imaginations of those who participate in it, into an economically viable product made for personally selected, individual consumption – or at the most, a fashionable, elite but ultimately inoffensive decoration for the solipsistic cycles of sex, money-making and waiting around that our lives are increasingly held to amount to.