TWENTY YEARS AGO record companies were up in arms. Someone had discovered that if you had a tape recorder you could tape a record and nobody made any money out of it. Not the musician, not the composer, not — and here it got serious — the record company.

The mighty WEA organisation took to printing warnings on the inner sleeves of its albums. “Home taping is killing music,” they shouted. “And it’s illegal,” they added, doubtless confident that this would put an end to all the apple scrumping.

And guess what? People carried on home taping, and record companies continued to make money. Not as much as they would have liked to have made, but still a lot.

Twenty years on, and doom once again stares the recording industry in the profit margin. This time it’s pirate CDs. In the six months to September EMI’s sales fell by nearly 10 per cent (OK, to nearly £1 billion, but these things are relative). And once again one of the reasons is piracy — of CDs this time. So stop it, all right, or that’s your recorded music industry gone for a Burton — and after all it’s done for you.

Pathetic. It’s like this newspaper putting a sign in railway carriages that reads: “Don’t pick up copies of The Times that other passengers have left on the seats. Buy your own, only 45p.”

But a CD isn’t 45p, is it? Even in the chart-led supermarkets it’s a tenner, and if you want to get something a bit more esoteric (ie, not Top 40) you’re looking at at least £12. But still people go out and buy them, which I call damn generous of them. Because a lot of the time what they are buying is not up to much. Little excitement surrounds the release of an important new album by an important name, presumably because neither is all that important.

Robbie Williams’s latest flounced into the record shops this week to a roar of indifference from the man himself. Like it or lump it, seemed to be his attitude. Oh, and is that an £80 million cheque in your pocket, EMI, or are you just pleased to see me? But let’s not kick EMI too hard. Let us not forget that, somehow, despite itself, it once signed the Beatles.

Now, as ever, there is something rotten in the state of pop. In the area of singles we are fed pap. Force yourself to watch Top of the Pops tonight. The best you will be able to say about it will be that it’s all right. The dance stuff will be all right. The rock stuff, the Europop, the sensitive singer-songwriter stuff, all of it all right.

And this will be because the best that the record companies are aiming for is “All right”. Will Young and Gareth Gates came out of Pop Idol waving the banner of “All right”. Will’s first single was a cover version of an obscure almost hit. It was all right. It sold a million. Gareth’s first single was Unchained Melody, a song so tamper-proof that even Robson & Jerome did an all right job on it. You can’t blame people for taping songs off the radio if the best that can be said about it is that it’s all right. And the albums? Well, I dunno, call me a sad old hippy, but I don’t see why the best songs on an album should be the singles. They should be appetisers, not the main course.

My daughter has the Red Hot Chili Peppers album, By the Way. She’s a big fan of the Chilis — of course she is, she’s 15 and that’s what you like when you’re 15. But if she’s such a big fan, why does she play only three songs off the album, including the single, over and over again? Because they’re the only songs she likes. Still, at least she has the album — there are kids wandering about in Slipknot tops who, I’m willing to give odds, have never bought a Slipknot album and have no intention of doing so.

What a shabby old state of affairs, and all of it down to the publicity machine that has encouraged our yoof to go for the sizzle over the steak any old day.

And, no, it wasn’t always like that. There was a time when the release of an album was an event, and you got a lovingly prepared, carefully compiled collection of songs that contained only a couple of instances of the drummer being given his head. Why, to the left you will even find a short list of perfect albums. And if they could do it then they can do it now.

ALL KILLER, NO FILLER

Six perfect albums

Tapestry Carole King
Every Picture Tells a Story Rod Stewart
My Aim is True Elvis Costello
Blood on the Tracks Bob Dylan
There Goes Rhymin’ Simon Paul Simon
A Hard Day’s Night Beatles

Is modern pop worth the plastic it's pressed on? Nominate your perfect album at debate@thetimes.co.uk