Thanks to yet another rousing stretch of insomnia over the weekend, I hit the home stretch in my CD-to-MP3 conversion project. So hooray for me.
The good news is, I’m almost finished. I began over a year ago with a pile of 1,200 CDs, and I’m finally down to the last 100. The end is in sight. Despite having so many CDs, I couldn’t tell you the last time I opened or listened to a physical disc. Whether we’re in the house or in the car, we pretty much listen to mp3s at this point. Things change.
The bad news is, I’m down to the absolute dregs of my collection. We’re talking disco compilations, spooky Halloween sounds from the dollar bin, John Williams’ greatest themes conducted by people other than John Williams, World’s Greatest Thunderstorms, and so forth. Plus, I have CDs from dozens of bands you’ve never heard of, a few of which came from countries you’ve never heard of. For a couple of years I wrote music reviews for other people’s websites and for a couple of years I ran my own review site, but long after I closed up shop bands and record labels continued to mail me their CDs to review. Some of the CDs I’m ripping to mp3 right now I’m literally opening for the first time. I may never listen to them, but I’m ripping them all to mp3 anyway. Why? Because everything is everything, and done is done. When I’m finished, there will be no question as to whether or not something was ripped. It’ll make me feel better.
The worse news is, I’ve found around 40 CDs in my collection that are completely unplayable. They’re not scratched or visually damaged, they just don’t play anymore. A few of these are promo CDs that were mailed to me, but most of them are ones I bought in retail stores several years ago. Some of them are things I’ve been able to find in mp3 format on the Internet, but many of them are less popular discs that I haven’t been able to find rips of. (Sue me for downloading mp3 rips of CDs I paid money for that rotted, I dare you.) I haven’t done a ton of testing on these discs yet — perhaps a different drive on a different machine might be able to read them, a theory I plan to test before giving up on them. Still, it’s a little scary thinking that so many of these discs went so bad so quickly. Perhaps that was the source of my insomnia …
No plans yet on what to do with all these physical CDs. I’ve checked into a few websites that accept used CDs — some pay cash, others trade for merchandise. For the time being I may just box them all up and stick them out in the garage. Baby steps, and all that.
Stats, we need stats. :) How much space do those 1200 CDs take up?
Discogs. discogs.com will definitely want to know about the more obscure ones. Oh, and you may even find buyers — if you’re up to the challenge. Did you scan the booklets/covers? It’d be a shame to deprive the world of weird and wonderful recorded sounds. /plug
I did my own digital music conversion project a few years ago. I had an old computer sitting in a closet that I turned into very capable music ripper PC.
Like you, we almost never listen to CDs any more, but I’m still a strong advocate of purchasing music on actual, physical discs. You retain the control over the resulting files that way and you’ve always got a recovery path if your PC dies and your backups are less than optimal.
I’ll admit that I have downloaded pirated versions of some old music that I couldn’t pull off of old LPs, cassettes, or damaged CDs. (In more than one case, I had already purchased the music on ancient 8-track format, but of course no longer had a way to play it, so I still felt justified in downloading those mp3s.)
Along the way during the ripping, I took the time to embed the album art into each song with Mp3tag. Sure, it pads up the resulting mp3 file tiny bit, but there’s a worthwhile payoff when using those on my iPod Nano & iPhone. I also used MixMeister BPM Analyzer to update the appropriate ID3 tag field with the beats per minute, which can be handy when assembling a workout mix.
By the way, I have the original discs stored in a few Case Logic binders and donated the jewel cases (via Craigslist) to an eager and grateful recipient. That really reduced the clutter!
I still have my original CDs even now, 8 years after I ripped them. Many reasons for that:
1. I never throw anything away. Not literally true but close enough.
2. Legal proof that I already own the real CD and so having the mp3s is OK. Of course, by now, the number of MP3 albums I have without corresponding CDs far exceeds the number of actual CDs I own which makes the whole saving thing kinda moot.
3. Sometimes I like to look at the album cover art. Some of those CDs have really cool album cover art.
4. Someday I might re-rip those CD’s. I ripped most of them at 192kbps which is fine for me. But maybe someday I want a 320kbps version of the CD or, in an effort to jam as many mp3s on a single CD (for my car) I want a 128 or even 64kbps version of the CDs. With all the air-noise in my car, I don’t really need a hi-fidelity version of the music and if I could jam more than 20 albums on a CD, that would be awesome.
Another reason to re-rip is a few of the CDs were not ripped properly. By that I mean I can hear noise in the background which does not appear when I play the CD on a different PC or CD player. My theory is the noise is from the CD drive I used to rip the CD. That might be a totally bogus theory but it’s the only explanation I have for the noise on the rip but not when I play the CDS on a different CD drive.
5. I have a boom box in my bedroom that does not play mp3s: just CDs. I’m not going to replace that boom box any time soon. So there.
I sold my physical CDs to Hastings in ridonkulous numbers. They carry some rather specific stuff there that I pick up on a semi-regular basis, and taking payment in Hastings store credit works out much better than trying to get cash, so it works out pretty well. It’s not even remotely like getting back what I originally put into the CDs, but you know as well as I do that if you’re waiting for that, you’re gonna be waiting a looooong time.