Indeed.
Using Nike’s slogan - Just do it!
The current estimate is around 1 in 8 households fail to pay the licence - just under £500 million in lost revenue. The cost of running the scheme including enforcement is £166 million, but only about 10-12% of people who don’t pay are ever prosecuted suggesting that the best way to fund the BBC would be to ditch the licence, and raise it from general taxation.
2 Likes
A service while in the UK though? Not while abroad. You could possibly have the service while abroad but your licence fee may end up being twenty times the current price. If you’re happy to pay that then it’s all good!
What has happened in the UK is pure daft … I will pick the two blindingly obvious ones … CD copying and TV licences … .
Now I am not going to argue the merits of having a Licence Fee… . But the law made it an ass … . A Licence used to be linked to the possession of a radio or TV capable of reception of broadcasts ..WHETHER IT was switched on or used or not ..It was still capable .. So boxes called TVs were included . The French extended the definition to include any device capable ..so as to include possession of media boxes and TV / Sat tuner cards and TV / Sat usb sticks ..and required every household to pay it or send a signed declaration that they had no such equipment on pain of criminal conviction … The UK Law started to waffle and make it only a requirement if you actively admitted watching the box … That’s no way to have a law. Possession means capable ..unless the screen is smashed
CD copying ..frankly I no longer understand that UK law ..It was legal to copy a disc you owned for use as backup or in a streamer ..Until that was prohibited ..has it changed again?
It was briefly legal, then challenged in the High Court and made illegal again in 2015.
But the idea of ripping your CD to an MP3 player is about as dead as the dodo. These days you might rent the ability to stream a song or movie or (increasingly) game with that ability under pain of withdrawal at a moment’s notice from the rights holder.
If buying is not ownership, piracy is not theft.
1 Like
Apparently CDs are the new Vinyl , and sales of CDs are growing ..at least if my HI Fi NEWs is to be believed . I flirt every so often with Streaming ..maybe take the 2 months reduced price offer and then cancel ..I find myself satiated after a few sessions ..and find I am reverting to the same old same old ..in my case Irish. Scottish Folk Revival stuff and a few Americana types thrown in… People with good clear diction and clever words regrettably the vast majority of them are deceased but the music persists . ..So my library is ripped onto FLAC and playable worldwide ..on my Plex . That was a once off purchase
I thought vinyl was the new vinyl - I’m obviously behind the times 
I think the issue is that a generation of people used to listening to compressed music through awful speakers/headphones are suddenly discovering uncompressed formats through some decent gear.
1 Like
Mmmm…
Vinyl is profitable no doubt …but I feel that wave has crested . What I currently do will be if I hear a particular artist I like, I might go on line and purchase the CD.. Then the CD is Ripped and left in its box …
Plex …Yes a lifetime membership for a once off discounted price .. My library sits on a usb hard drive attached to a extremely feeble low powered windows 10 sub sized "laptop " ..and can be accessed from.abroad by me.
I don’t think it has, all of my young grandkids are switching to vinyl, including the 6 year old, he got a much longed for deck for his recent birthday.
You mean the one that is now $749.99, thanks but no thanks.
I had things in Ampache years ago (I think it is making a comeback) but making sure all the file metadata was correct and consistent was a pain.
I also use Nextcloud and minidlna (now known as ReadyMedia).
On the other hand, for many people ripping your CDs in 44.1kHz lossless to a media server is more convenient for playback than using them via a CD player, especially if you like making playlists rather than sitting and listening to whole albums.
Although I still like the hands-on aspect of putting a CD or LP into or onto a player.
I think you can use Plex locally for your own media for free - you only need to buy a subscription to “Plex Pass” (or a lifetime membership) if you want to stream your stuff to your devices remotely i.e. when not on your home network.
1 Like
Cassettes are the new vinyl. We’re having to put in orders 3 years ahead as there are so few places that will produce them now and cassettes have unexpectedly become one of the hottest merch categories. I don’t know how many ever actually get played which is sad, but then that goes for CDs and Vinyl too, but yeah, people are loving a retro cassette at the moment, both for legacy albums or new. I’d be very surprised if Taylor Swift doesn’t have a cassette out for her latest album, it might improve the listening experience too…
1 Like
No doubt cassettes are loved by an industry as they degrade and are low quality.
2 Likes
Cresting is definitely a feeling 
I don’t actually remember what I paid , it was a few years ago but it was somewhere like 60 euro. ..not 10 times that…
Probably when it was first introduced which was $74.99 (according to Google AI) with discounts taking it as low as $29.99 - the current price is (as stated) $749.99 which was increased from $249.99 only recently - the beginning of July this year.
Needless to say there has been rather a lot of negative and very little positive comment on the subject.
My preference will always be for fully open source solutions, even if I have to rent a server to run them on - mind you I see that servers are getting expensive these days.
Half tempted to rent an industrial unit somewhere and see if anyone wants the equivalent of rent a wreck but for servers.
… Whether you need to spend money in setting up servers or rental and Www. type access wen you already have an internet access via Orange et al . Is choice My son has made a number of such objects using relatively feeble kit ..Raspberry Pi amongst them.. But then he is employed as QA on Software Development .. He seemed to favour Jellyfin
. A visit to a Cash convertors , or a charity shop or even the local dechattere makes the hardware available ..Indeed if you were ever a " Techifurtler " as the BBC programme , in the 90s referred ,such kit is probably in the attic …
I personally wouldn’t! Excluding its use in Fools and Horses it was/is slang for the penis, dating back to around 1920.