Another great service find from Time Out Chicago this week, Ripit Digital is a local business whose time has come.
At least at our home it has. We are really ready to lose the cd's...we haven't bought an actual cd in a long time, we've been purchasing digital music over the internet. We rarely use our cd player anymore either, but still have years worth of music that we are storing. Our plan: just rip the cd's we want and go completely digital.
Sounds great, and we have been ripping cd's as we think of it, but it's very slow process. Because it's not #1 on on our to-do list, the pile of cd's to be ripped is not really shrinking.
That's still kind of expensive considering that I have over 700 CDs. That would run me over $700 to rip all of my cds.
I just do a few everyday, but it is very time consuming.
I read about a place online (sorry, can't think of the name!) and you basically give them your CD's and they rip them all for you. You don't pay anything, but then they have the CD's.
Considering the fact that small CD stores that buy used CD's don't pay much for them, a service like this takes care of ripping the CD's for you and gets them out of your house.
I actually like my CD's - the cover art, liner notes, etc. and still buy them. I listen to CD's front to back too, guess that makes me "old school".
Paying $1.40 per CD though seems high when some people have tons of CD's. Keisha has over 700, I easily have over $1,000. That would be $1,100 for me. For that money I could buy 110 new albums (or a weekend getaway, or a club chair, or a television, or...)
I'd love to know how the place that keeps your CD's gets away with that. Technically you're only supposed to make digital copies of media that you own. Once you (essentially) sell it to the service, you no longer own the media and are therefore violating copyright law. I'd hate to have my name on their customer list when the RIAA comes a'knockin'.
SpaceMonkeyX - that is an excellent point. It sounds like there is definitely some kind of violation there. I wish I could remember the name of that place so I could see if it is still online and if they are still in business.
One thing that really bugs me about the whole "iPod culture" is the number of people I know who steal music. I know people who will give each other thousands of MP3's and think nothing of it. One of my co-workers said her neighbor came over and put 10,000 songs on her computer. Has the definition of stealing been completely obliterated?
I guess nobody cares about these things any more. I'm certainly not a moral compass, but music means a whole lot to me. I play music and write music and have been buying music and going to concerts since before I was a teenager. It irks me when people have this "music should be free" mentality because it certainly isn't free to the artists and persons associated with producing music.
I just think it's a shame. I know a lot of people obtain their digital music legally (ripping it from their own CD's, purchasing tracks or albums from iTunes, Amazon, band sites, etc.) but I think there are a lot more people who don't.
Yup, there's no legal justification for ripping a CD then getting rid of the hard copy while keeping the digital copy. Surely this site wouldn't advocate anything illegal... it would be like buying Maxwell's book, scanning it, then selling it again (and denying Maxwell one sale of his book).
This is a handy service though if you plan on keeping the CDs in storage. We've stashed our CDs in a pretty inaccessible location (the top shelf of one of our closets is partly blocked by AC ducting) but the time it took to get them all ripped -- oy! -- I wouldn't have minded being able to pay someone else to do it!
I ripped about 70 CDs myself and sold them to a music store for an average of $2 per CD. If the service costs $1.40 per CD, you'd still make up the cost after selling it.
Have y'all read Maxwell's book? Because he recommends doing just that--ripping your CDs and selling the hard copies to a used CD store. It's on page 135.
I used RipItDigital and it was a great experience!!! Not only do they offer ripping services for CD's but they convert a variety of media. They are able to convert cassettes, records, etc. to digital files. The "ipod culture" does not cater to the true music collectors..try and find a rare classical cut or jazz cut on Itunes or any site for that matter. They don't exist in the digital format and RipItDigital was able to help me put my rare cuts on my Ipod. Also I talked briefly with the owner and he had looked into all the legal ramifications. The service was well worth it. If I was trying to convert my own collection I would still be working on it.
It seems nearly profane to treat this art form in such a disposable manner. As a music lover *and* a designer, I could not bear to part with the original art and liner notes of cd packaging! Who hasn't come home with a new record [cd, vinyl] purchase and looked at all the photos and read the notes cover to cover while listening to the new acquisition? Who hasn't bought an album on occasion [in any tangible format] just *for* the beautiful packaging? Sure, having digital copies can be convenient on our ipods [yep, I use one, too] but just as I would never have replaced my vinyl albums with cassette tape copies, I will neither settle for trading my audio library for sub-quality representations of the original releases in this format. Besides the aesthetics and total package-in-hand the musicians intended the listener to have, digital media is impermanent. Legitimately manufactured authorized cd releases [with their own sonic shortcomings] have a longer shelf life than DIY burned copy media has due to the physical etching of the date on the disc, whereas blank consumer writable cds do not. Do you really care so little about your audio a] to reduce the quality, and b] to see it gone in 6-24 months [or so] when the copy meets the end of its shelf-life?
OOPS! INDIGNANT TYPO ALERT in my previous post! SORRY! Here is the CORRECTED version, THANKS: It seems nearly profane to treat this art form in such a disposable manner. As a music lover *and* a designer, I could not bear to part with the original art and liner notes of cd packaging! Who hasn't come home with a new record [cd, vinyl] purchase and looked at all the photos and read the notes cover to cover while listening to the new acquisition? Who hasn't bought an album on occasion [in any tangible format] just *for* the beautiful packaging? Sure, having digital copies can be convenient on our ipods [yep, I use one, too] but just as I would never have replaced my vinyl albums with cassette tape copies, I will neither settle for trading my audio library for sub-quality representations of the original releases in this format. Besides being orhaned from the aesthetics and total package-in-hand the musicians intended the listener to have, digital media is impermanent. Legitimately manufactured authorized cd releases [with their own sonic shortcomings] have a longer shelf life than DIY burned copy media has due to the physical etching of the data on the disc, whereas blank consumer writable cds do not. Do you really care so little about your audio a] to reduce the quality, and b] to see it gone in 6-24 months [or so] when the copy meets the end of its shelf-life?
I appreciate Linda's comments above, as most of the CDs (and VHS) I own are opera. I need the original packaging of the CD box set because this includes the libretto, plus essays an interviews.