In a development that has sent tremors through the Biscuit Tin Isles and caused every A&R man worth his cocaine-fuelled lunch to clutch his pearls, a 22-year-old specimen of exquisite stupidity has been banged up for 21 months after nicking a laptop containing unreleased Beyoncé bangers from a parked motor. Yes, you heard that correctly. A man, let us call him a ‘music enthusiast’ with the intellectual heft of a wet paper bag, decided that the best way to acquire the Queen of Pop’s sacred stems was to jimmy the window of a Kia Rio in a Shepherd’s Bush car park. Because nothing screams ‘I respect artistry’ quite like grand theft auto-light with a side of sonic vandalism.

The unnamed miscreant, who we can safely assume has the dress sense of a rejected X Factor contestant, swiped a rucksack containing a laptop from the back seat of a motor belonging to one of Beyoncé’s backing dancers. This laptop, I am reliably informed by sources who definitely didn’t make this up, contained a veritable treasure trove of unvarnished vocal gold: enough unfinished demos and half-baked harmonies to make the entire UK music industry simultaneously salivate and soil their creased chinos. The thief, presumably expecting a quick resale on the dark web to a Nigerian prince who definitely has a taste for boundary-pushing R&B, instead found himself on the receiving end of the full, thundering weight of the law, or at least the bit of the law that deals with petty larceny and has a working knowledge of the Hot 100.

The recording industry, a cabal of men in bad suits whose obsession with ‘exclusive content’ borders on the pathological, has responded with the sort of apoplectic fury usually reserved for a leaked album or a badly-timed collective bargaining agreement. Spokesperson, let us call her Cressida Foxton-Blythe, was wheeled out to decry the ‘heinous act of cultural vandalism’ and to demand that the courts start handing out sentences that actually make the chattering classes sit up and pay attention. “Twenty-one months?” she shrieked, her voice cracking under the strain of genuine, unadulterated horror. “This man has potentially destroyed the entire commercial rollout of the most anticipated record of the decade! He should be drawing his pension before he sees daylight again!” The court, it seems, was unmoved by this impassioned plea, settling instead for a tariff that will see our hero released just in time to catch the inevitable hologram tour.

Let us pause for a moment to consider the sheer, breathtaking absurdity of this entire circus. We live in a world where the theft of a laptop containing snippets of a very rich woman singing about the travails of being a global superstar is treated with the same gravity as, say, the theft of a loaf of bread in a particularly draconian Victorian parish. The music industry, my friends, is a glorious, ridiculous pantomime. It is a vast edifice built on the fragile foundations of intellectual property law, fanboy hysteria, and the terrifyingly powerful scent of money. And the people who run it have convinced themselves that Beyoncé’s demos are the modern equivalent of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a sacred text that, if leaked without proper payment, would cause the very fabric of pop-culture reality to unravel.

The man himself, meanwhile, is a cautionary tale of misplaced ambition. He is the living embodiment of the digital age’s most ignoble pursuit: the desperate, pathetic grab for a quick buck in a world where everyone thinks they’re one leaked track away from a fortune. He is a moron, granted, but a moron who has become a reluctant symbol of the sheer, unadulterated avarice that underpins the entire shiny, autotuned edifice. And the music industry, in its infinite, self-regarding wisdom, has decided that making an example of him is the only way to preserve the sanctity of the product. Because nothing says ‘we value art’ quite like sending a man to prison for 21 months so that a 0.001%er can continue to rent an extra Venetian palazzo for her summer holiday.

The judge, a man who looked like he’d never knowingly listened to a full Beyoncé album in his life, summed up the situation with the kind of pained, upper-class bewilderment that only a British magistrate can muster. He described the crime as ‘a wanton act of criminal opportunism that has caused untold distress to an artist of immense talent and cultural importance.’ He then adjourned for lunch, presumably to a club where the music is played on a gramophone and the gin is served with a side of quiet, gentlemanly disdain. The thief, as he was led away to begin his stint in the nation’s finest correctional facility – or ‘university of crime’ as it is known to the lower orders – looked genuinely baffled. He had, after all, only wanted a bit of Besame Mucho in his earbuds. And now he was going to get a very different kind of bang for his buck.

So what have we learned from this latest episode in the ongoing tragicomedy of the British music scene? We have learned that the industry will stop at nothing to protect its precious, oligarchic revenue streams. We have learned that the law is a flexible instrument that can be twisted into absurd shapes when enough corporate money is at stake. And we have learned that, for the price of a Kia Rio’s window, you too can secure a ringside seat to the most expensive, self-important circus on earth. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a gin to finish and a yacht to charter. The music industry waits for no man.