Exactly. Although "buy" is usually "rent".

Unless you are on the platform all day randomly listening to stuff new and old, I see no financial sense in forever renting access to music.

I have about 30 CD's at home and the bulk of ALL my listening need and pleasure is handled by them. They cost me nothing besides the initial purchase price, spread over the 30 years I've had most of them plus manay were cheap as chips charity shop finds, they cost practically nothing. If I were to do what I'm told to do I'd rent access to them on a streaming platform, paying TWICE (rent and data) to listen to them. Now, thing is, I may go months without listening to any of them, yet I'm still needed to pay the rent?!?

My best mate went the MP3 route, ripped his CD's and downloads SINGLE tracks as he likes from Amazon, no DRM etc. He listens to music more than I do but even he has no care for streaming, he too sees no pint in renting a spot on a platform that wont be there in 10 years.

> don't you just stream anyway

Um, tell me. Why on earth would I rent the same music forever?

Where is the logic? I have never understood it. If you were addicted to randomly listening to loads of stuff, maybe it would make sense. But why would I rent the same few albums? And get this, it's not even pay per play! I pay to play the music...even when I'm not playing it.

Take a car for example. Renting a car is pretty normal, but there is always an end data where you can purchase it or move to another model. But as in the case of streaming, say there IS NO new model and NO end date. You rent the SAME car forever.

Now, say you hurt yuor leg and cant drive any car for say, um, two years while you heal. What idiot would rent that car while they cant use it?

Streaming makes zero financial sense unless you are very likley to randomly be on it every day randomly looking at random stuff all the time.

> Who buys CDs these days?

People who want to own the music forever.

People who want stuff that will never appear on streaming.

People who are fed up with "buying" and album on a platform only to discover:

- Missing tracks.
- Tracks that *go missing after a period of time*.
- Tracks in the *wrong order*.
- Tracks that have the wrong name.
- Tracks that have been censored
- Tracks that are re-recordings

Also, we should consider "Who sells CD's these days"?

With the answer being: Artists who actually want to make money in 2025, who release a CD, a limited edition one as well plus a vynil LP. All while the meagre money that comes from streaming just about manages to pay for the bowl of cereal they have every morning.

If physical was to actually "be killed" by streaming, well you'd expect that perhaps streaming would pay artists actual money? Look at the numbers. Nobody ever got ruch from streaming, thats the point. The same is true for ebooks vs actual paper books. I know someone who is a "sucessful" rapper, but as he is only using streaming platforms he has no house, no money. Always skint.

And if the band really wants to rake it in the'll hold a concert where they will make a mint on ticket sales, plus sell t-shirst and the GOD DAMN CD's :D

Same thing is true for the movie industry. The movie makes much of its profot in 2025 from... PHYSICAL MEDIA SALES.

The numbers dont lie.

Yes, duh.

You expect me to rely on streaming while driving through the UK countryside with a 4 your old who wants nothing more than the scooby doo theme?

> When Spain went lights out, Morocco swapped from importing from Spain, to exporting 500 MW and seeded the restart and stabilised the network

None of the UKs interconnectors are black start capable. None of the solar farms are. Only one wind farm is. The rest are traditional gas power stations.

We already have many interconnectors so unless this one is black start capable then I dont see a point in it.

We dont need to import them. They make their own way here and usually are delivered by the French Navy

We have enough interconnectors as it is. In the current climate (political) having too many eggs in one basket is just asking for trouble considering the interconnectors are easily "damaged" by Russian "fishing vessels" that like earlier in the year just "accidentally" turned off their transponders while spending a good long while loitering around our undersea cables and making use of their submersibles which you'd think were a pretty odd thing for a "fishing vessel" to have eh?

This country needs to get its act together regarding building nuclear. Several sites are due to close and NO replacements have been approved apart from two, one of which hasnt even begun construction as it was finally approved only last month and the other has been a nightmare of delays, spiralling costs and is ALREADY a decade late and wont open for mant more years yet.

Interconnectors are great and we have several but I dont think we need new ones. Our energy costs are already the 3rd highest on the world joint with a few other countries:

https://www.statista.com/stati...

The UK electricity is between 2x and 3x that of US electricity costs and the only way we will get that down is if we stop importing other peoples energy. The UK kwh price is set by gas across the board, it doenst matter if all the solar panels and wind turbines in the UK are all blowing and shining all day, that "cheaper" electricity is bumped up to the price of gas simply because just ONE gas power station is running somewhere. Gas prices are set by shady oil organisations/barons who artificially control the price worldwide to ensure they make huge profits.

If you have a smart meter in the UK AND you are lucky enough to find a tariff that does this, you can have time of day charging where a REALLY SUNNY day will mean you can have lower kWh prices. But almost nobody is on such a tariff and huge numbers have no smart meter to begin with.

We need to build nuclear and fast. Yes, nuclear will still be pricier but is FAR cheaper than gas and last far longer than any solar panel. Rolls Royce already have the contract to build SMR systems which thanks to being built in a factory can be built, vetted, tested and signed off in record time then delivered to site and put together like Ikea furniture.

Only 10% have air conditining, in an area knows for being HOT HOT HOT all year.

Why will they need that wasteful technology that causes so much damage to the climate?

There are better ways as they already know and use.

Build better, build cooler. Sleep during the hottest part of the day like in many parts of the world.

Remember: Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.

> This gets to a recently highlighted article on Slashdot on the UK government incentivizing the construction of new nuclear power plants

A moot point.

It will take 10-15 years to build just ONE plant.

The single plane we are building is way late, massivley over budget and has been controversioal for so long nobody take it seriously anymore. It's a joke, a money waters dream and only provides a tiny boost to the grid compared to our forever increasing insane demand.

The biggest problem I see with nuclear is it has no black start capability nor inertia. Only one windfarm in the UK has black start capability, no solar farms. Heck you cant even power your house from your own panel in a blackout.

Nuclear was killed years ago. But it's offspring is here, fast to build, easy to run, effortlessly safe. Small Modular Reactors. SMRs will blow open green energy, these things are being built in factories! Build one, ship it, install it and comission it and off it goes generating nuclear power. No fussy red tape that makes you spend a year building the walls for an employee toilet correctly. SMRs will pop up everywhere and then maybe we can finally start having the lights on again.

But, I dont think they have black start capability either, we will need to sort that out before we finally get rid of the gas stations.

As for batteries, well the UK has 127GW of battery capacity planned. But only 8% is built.

For the home I think a heat battery is best. A solar panel can be used to chard that heat battery with no grid connection and it will heat water on-demand.

Agree 100% with pumped hydro however there are limited sites around that can be used for it.

> Putting batteries on the grid may be fast

You have to buy the land first and that can slow things down.

> The benefit of pumped hydro is that it means large bodies of water that can serve double duty as a heat sink for thermal power plants.

I think you mean a heat source?

> water for irrigation and municipal supplies

Pumped hydro is supposed to be a closed system. You pump the water up to the top of the mountain and fill a massive pond, then you let it all go to the now mostly empty lake at the bottom. Nobody is drinking that, in fact there usually is nobody living nearby as they tend to be in the middle on nowhere thanks to the fact they are usually in nature reserves. You may have a village or two and perhaps they, if close by, could use water source heat pumps with that water.

Pumped hydro can do that buy you'll have to find the sites.

> perhaps used to generate hydrogen

I dont see a point in that. Hasnt got a use.

Flywheels are an option. We have one in the ffestiniog power station so that would be ideal.

> or synthesize gasoline

It's hyper expensive already and it would also go against net zero targets. We'll have kids and pensioners in the streets gluing themselves to tarmac all over again.

Which rivers, I don’t think any are dammable.

You'll probably want more pumped hydro then... That’s been floated about (pun intended). Only no sod knows where to build one. That’s the best plan, but adding more pumped hydro is a bit like building a reservoir and we haven’t done that for 50 years and now are running out of fresh water.

> The fastest solution is to build a few batteries

Where?

Whos land?

Maybe brownfeild?

I think you'll be struggling as land is a premium asset on an island.

Perhaps the batteries should be spread out, uner each panel in a field can be a battery. It thus gets shaded too, which helps with coolling.

However I can imagine many trying to nick them like they do with copper.

Bear in mind that 90% of people dont have these "charging periods" you speak of.

Which means 100% of their bill IS at the price of gas, regardless of if it was ever used. 100% of my bill is calculated from the price per unit as if it were only gas.

Very few people have the ability to even consider switching tariff, let alone the ability to switch to a time of day tariff with charging periods.

> Power plants like coal and nuclear are slow to change

Pointing out we have no coal power stations in the UK. We have lots of CCGT and a few OCGT and they are used to meet rapid demand spikes. There are also some pumped hydro which are also used for such rapid responses.

The problem with nuclear is the regulations etc are stuck so much in the past it takes an age to simply start building one. Past governments have simply let the old sites whither and close, or allowed an extension after a bit if spit and polish. No new nuclear was built, none. So we are stuck in a situation where several of the few remaining sites/reactors will close before Hinckley Point C even starts being commissioned. Pretty standard fayre over here.

> One way to at least relieve the situation quite a bit is to run batteries at every installation to smooth out the day to day production/consumption

Sounds nice on paper but will never happen. Also trying to convert UK houses to multiple phases will never get off the ground. Consider that energy companies have failed to manage to force everyone to install a smart meter, so they risk getting fined for not having installed them, but the regulator would smash their knuckles should they actually make smart meters non-optional. I'm one of the holdouts. I get calls, SMS, emails and post all telling me "it's time to upgrade" and it will "save me energy" blah blah which I know is a con. What saves energy is not using it. Nobody ever needed a smart meter to do that. We have these amazing things called s-w-i-t-c-h-e-s and I've never known anyone not to switch off the wall socket of devices that shouldn’t be on! So it turns out that it'll save a few hundred quid a year, but that makes just a few quid a month if that. Wow. If they design the SMETS 3 meters correctly (unlike the burning pile of dog shit that was the current meters), I may bite.

So as they can’t get us to upgrade, they have zero chance re-gigging the entire house for multiple phases. They don’t need to anyway, it’s all done at the substation. Most UK housing are ring mains so you'll have to employ teams of people to enter EVERY property in the UK and literally re-wire the house, FOR FREE. It has to be free as nobody today is going to pay to have it done.

Batteries? Heck those aint even free so they are a dead end. Considering that for the majority of housing they will be not permitted as they will be *considered a fire hazard*. So you'll only be able to target detached housing, perhaps semi-detached and likely will have to wait till sodium batteries become the norm so wont explode and kill your neighbours. Who will pay for it again? In a country that won’t install heat pumps because it'll cost at least 10 grand (not to mention you can only install them in non-terraced)...

You see the problem. It amazes me that somehow in the past this country managed to rustle up workers and pay them to *actually enter people’s homes* and convert their gas appliances from town gas to LNG, for FREE.

But today, none of that is possible so this sort of thing just is normal:

1. Installation of smart meters has low uptake.
2. Upgrade of copper phone lines to fibre has been delayed multiple times and is now on pause pending government review.
3. Heat Pumps are pushed to a public that can’t afford to install them and rarely live in a property that can LEGALLY have one installed.
4. Electric cars are peddled to a public that largely live in housing that has no off street parking and thus cannot charge at home. Charging at home is ideal as VAT on leccy is fixed to 5% there, but public chargers have 30% VAT on leccy plus additional costs.
5. To use a heat pump, and to save energy in general, you need to insulate. Grants exist but most people:
5.1 Dont know they can add insulation.
5.2 Have a land lord that doenst know.
5.3 Have no money to do it, even with the grant.
5.4 Have no time to do it as they are too busy working their socks off to pay the bills.
5.5 Cant get the grant as they dont qualify.

My Uncle cant work. He has had multiple strokes and is registered on the energy priority register, which means no matter who the energy supplier is, he should be top of the queue for resolution of issues. The house he and his daughter live in had a working boiler till TWO years ago when it practically blew itself up. It was fixed, but couldnt handle running more than a few weeks before it died again, at which point the gas engineer condemned it. They spent two years, TWO years with NO hot water at all, nor any heating. TWO winters with fan heaters and boiling a kettle to wash with.

He didn’t qualify for an insulation grant, nor for a grant to install a new boiler. Even though he had no income, was unable to work, was on Universal Credit and other benefits. Forget a heat pump, they couldn’t afford the £1000 to install a new boiler, you think they'll and others like them would fork out the £10,000-£14,000 needed to install a heat pump that won’t work in their old uninsulated house?

You see the problem?

To fix it, you'll need a government that will look beyond their guaranteed 5 years. They will have to fix the current economy and save money to build a government funded force of installers. You want multi-phase leccy? Or batteries? In every home? Well that massive undertaking will be a multi-decade project which will have to handle "real life (tm)". Homeowners not being home when they were supposed to be, only being home when you are not able to turn up, can’t be home for the second day that you need because you found a big issue with that particular house.

I wouldn’t want to run such a massive project. It would probably drive me insane.