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Pay To Have Your CDs Turned Into MP3s
from the get-to-it dept
I've mentioned before that I'm still a bit behind on using digitized music, as it seems like quite a chore to rip all my CDs. It's been something of an ad hoc process. Every once in a while, when I want to listen to a specific CD and have the music stored on my computer, I'll rip that CD. However, ripping them all (over 1,000) seems like quite a process. That said, I'm still not sure I'd be interested in a service that would rip your CDs into MP3s for you. Still, it appears plenty of people are interested and are paying about a dollar per CD to have the process done. While the service was originally intended for DJs, many people are apparently signing up to have their personal collections ripped as well. Of course, you have to wonder how sustainable this business is. You certainly aren't going to have many repeat customers.
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Dude, this "news" is seriously old: check PC mag for article in September/October
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http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1307343,00.asp
October 2003
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Who need repeat customers...
... when you've got referrals? There are millions of people with large CD collections and more money than time. And prices will slowly edge down as more competitors enter the market, making it less appealing for folks to rip their own collections.
It would be nice if there were a cheap, high quality mass-market vinyl digitizing service, too. Maybe that's one area these services will branch into in the future.
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Ripping a stack of CDs is a pain
I did it a couple of years back when I got my first portable MP3 player and even with freeware tools off of the web that do the CD-DB look up automatically, it's still a pain to go through.
First off you have people who are apparently dsylexic or who just can't spell (like me!) who fill out submissions to the database and there are often times that there is more than one entry for an album, so you have to pick the one with the fewest misspellings from the various entries, then pick the tracks you want, or wait and delete the filler tracks when the process is over. Then I ran into the "you've reach the maximum # of free CD-DB lookups for today - give us some money or come back later" so there is no way I could do my whole collection for free in a day.
I only did a few dozen CDs out of my collection of several hundred and decided it was just easier to download the tracks I wanted rather than to keep going.
Even at $1 a CD, it would cost me at least $350 plus shipping to get the rest of my album converted and I just don't think it's worth that much to me.
For that kind of money I'd buy a very cheap laptop to put on my desk at work and swap out CDs every hour or so and rip the collection over an extended period of time...
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I did this
About a year ago, I started the laborious process of ripping all 1200+ CDs in my collection. It took a remarkably short amount of time.
I used 2 laptops working together. Ripping tool was audiograbber (which uses freedb). Still 10% of my CDs were either not found or incorrrect. The biggest issue I found were the people who do not know the difference between artist and track title on compilation CDs, luckily, audiograbber can fix this (and improper caps) in under 1 second.
Now, I have all my CDs (over 1600) encoded on a portable hard drive, and just encode new ones as I get them.
My 60 GB Nomad Zen loves the portable Hard Drive...
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Re: I did this
Thanks BtG, I'll check out Audiograbber and see if it works equally well for me.
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