For the hour that I spent there with my father, silently flicking through the racks, I was the only woman in the shop. I bought a record called Purple Pills - a collection of long-forgotten British garage acts from the 1960s, and replaced my cassettes of Teenage Fan club’s 13 and Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush. My dad chose a collection by the Band. It was a perfect morning, a reminder of my younger years, when we visited record fairs together.

But were we flicking through the racks differently? Were we fulfilling different musical cravings; was I, as a woman, likely to find something different in Neil Young, than my father would glean from the Band? The co-ordinator of the BBC’s popular music coverage across TV and radio, Lesley Douglas appearing on Radio 4’s Feedback programme to defend recent changes to BBC 6 Music, explained that many of the changes, such as adding more “personality” DJs, were instigated to entice female listeners.

There was, she argued, “no reason why women shouldn’t love music as much as men” and further explained: For women, there tends to be a more emotional reaction to music. Men tend to be more interested in the intellectual side: the tracks, where albums have been made, that sort of thing.

People, not just men and women, listen to music differently. My father and I, standing in Cob Records that morning, may have been listening to the same songs through the shop’s speaker system, but there existed a far greater gulf between us than gender. I am a lyrics person and he a music person. Ask him how the chorus goes and he’ll whistle you a tune; ask me, and I’ll sing you the words. I suspect women and men do respond to music differently.

If we are to agree that women are more at ease with discussing emotions, and therefore more comfortable with the idea of embracing their emotional response to music, then it is logical to assume that the songs might appeal more to women than to men.

The problem is, there prevails a notion that to take anything other than a masculine, cataloguing approach to music is a weakness; that loving the way Bob Dylan sings is not as important as knowing where he recorded it.