Downsizing Physical Collection (CDs/Vinyl) - Going Digital (Your Advice and/or Regrets)

I think you're on to something here. That is my philosophy as well. I have about 1000 cds, collected over the past 25 years. Very modest compared to a lot of collectors on this board. I find that I only buy stuff that I really want, and I don't go overboard (ie, buying 30 cds at a time, which half I won't really listen to).

On example of this, is my video game collection. I love retro video games, and I have about 130 games in total. On various video game forums, I see guys with 5000 or 6000 games! But, they collect all the crappy games that will never get played. To me, this becomes overwelming, and to be honest, takes the fun out of collecting. What I do, is research and buy an NES game, complete in box, and really play it and enjoy it, then put it on my shelf to play another time.

I find when you have a modest collection, you will enjoy it a lot more.

To the OP, perhaps cull your collection, get rid of stuff you know you'll never listen to.

 

This. When you have to move every other year, which most of us do in our 20s it's easy not to accumulate a ton of crap. Then you buy a house and extraneous junk grows in the attic/basement/garage. Then you have to move and it's "holy bleep how did all this junk get here?" That's when you have to prioritize: if you haven't used/worn/read/listened to an item in a year or two, sell it on eBay or Craigslist. Chances are it's not that important to you anyway. Maybe you'll miss it, but you probably won't and if you ever do you can always replace it.

 

Listen to Flavor Flav and don´t believe the hype!!

Physical format is also an art form, and sound wise aside, it´s something to treasure.

I seriously advice you to think it over. The hell of the music lover is full of this kind of regrets.

 

Check out murfie.com, they will store your physical collection for you and make it available for streaming (including lossless via certain systems) or download (alac, flac or mp3/acc). You can sell CDs via their website if you don't download it. You can also send them a harddrive and they will send it back filled with your music collection. Really nice folks, located in Madison, WI. I don't store with them, but have bought 150+ CDs over the years and love the idea that there is a drawer with my collection in it!

For CD's, I put them all in books starting in the late 90s and kept the liner notes/cover art in a seperate box, then recycled the jewel cases. I keep the books in a storage shed as an offsite physical backup to the harddrive after I ripped them to lossless. It also prevents me from selling them which I did during my college years and always regreted.

I also have a small collection (30 CDs and 50 SACDs) that I display on a shelf by the SACD player.

 

For ripping I use EAC (Exact Audio Copy). You can set it up to rip losslessly to whatever file type you like and it has error correction.

 

I would not do it. Did something similar with records back in the 1990s and regretted it ever since and had to buy back some of them. Physical media is truly special.

-Richard

 

Call the copyright police. I'm all for protecting artists. It's what I do for a living, but if I decided to sell my CDs in this way later in life. I would not throw away my hard drive which has most of that music.

Yes the letter of the law probably wouldn't be on my side , but I feel I have contrived hundreds of thousands of dollars to the livelihood of artists over the past 50 years. I would feel ok doing this.

 

Starting a few years ago I converted all my CDs (~5,000) to digital lossless files. I use FLAC. Converted to FLAC with dbpoweramp. Converting is easy. Hard part is tagging. Good metadata (tags) is key to making collection useful in many sorts of players/servers. If you have lots of classical, then tagging is more challenging as the automatic tagging databases probably don't fit your personal model of organization. Pop/Rock/Jazz is much easier. Make sure you use a ripper that allows you to determine the quality (bit perfect) of your rip. A ripper that uses ACCURATERIP database is best (dbpoweramp, EAC, cuetools). Spend the time up front to get the rips perfect and the metadata to your liking. It pays off in the end.

I kept my cds, but I got rid of the jewel cases and put everything in "jewel sleeves" that retain the booklet, CD, and back matter (without any cutting). But I can fit 1,000 CDs in about a 3 foot x 3 foot cabinet with this approach.
http://www.jewelsleeve.com/

I play my digital files through "squeezebox" networked music players of various sorts, with music served by a linux headless server stored in a back closet of my home. I can control all these players and the server from my laptop, from my iphone, or from my iPad. Each player can play something different or I can have several players synched to play exactly the same thing. Some players are "stand-alone" (e.g., bedside radio) while some are simply connected to my main 2 channel stereo system or AV setup via an external or internal DAC (e.g., just as one would connect a CD player to the preamp).

In addition to space, the main benefit I received is that my entire collection is at my fingertips, searchable, browseable, and very useable. I have lots of backups of course (disk space is cheap). And I also have a complete backup attached to my office computer (so I can play my collection at work via foobar2000 running on my computer) and on a server at my weekend cottage. So my complete collection is available at 3 different locations, easy to maintain/add to, etc. I also keep a mirror version of the complete collection converted to mp3 (lame -v2) for portable use on my ipod/iphone/ipad.

If one is embarking on a digitizing mission, I recommend highly several tools: (1) dbpoweramp (ripping), (2) cuetools (ripping/repairs on damaged rips), (3) mp3tag (tag cleanup, and works with other than just mp3tag). And they all have good, user friendly forums for help. dbpoweramp is not free but it the best ~$40 I ever spent related to my music collection.

Edit: over the years I've culled down to about 250 albums on vinyl (I purchased my first album in 1966 - "The Best of the Animals"). I can play them in a turntable setup at my home. This said, I don't often use the turntable and I haven't added to the vinyl collection since about 1989 or so.

Other than the vinyl, when I go into the nursing home, my complete collection, including 2 backups, will fit into a small backpack. Some good headphones and a small player and I'm all set! (of course by then, this will all be the least of my concerns....)

 

I've been crucified for bringing this up before, but here it goes anyway... I hope you understand that you're selling your music, not just the "physical media". When you sell a CD you're no longer entitled to keep any digital copies that you're made. I know that this is just a technicality and you'd never get caught, but it's something to keep in mind anyway. I also know that a lot of people around here like to act like it's no big deal, but it's exactly the same thing as just illegally downloading the music to begin with. It's funny because many of the same people who lambaste me for bringing it up, act holier than thou when the topic of illegally downloading music comes up, yet there's really no difference.

 

Wow some interesting replies. I understand why some can't fathom parting with physical media. If circumstances were different for me I might be right there with you. I once had room for all of this stuff and due to things that have happened in my life I no longer do. It's not an "anti-physical media" stance, it's simple practicality at this point in my life. I no longer have room for it and I don't want to pay indefinitely to store it.

As for the "morality police"? I've spent an absurd amount of money on music in my life. Never illegally downloaded anything. I don't plan on ripping everything, but even if I did what's the difference if I rip and donate (where they will be resold) or sell? Unless I physically destroy them, they will end up being resold by somebody. And the second-hand CD market isn't putting money in artists pockets anyway.

 

I totally understand and agree with much of what you bring up. But it is certainly not the same as if you only illegally downloaded the music.

In that case you paid nothing to artists or record companies. Zero zip. I have about 4500 CDs plus many more box sets so they collectively recived around $80,000 from me alone.

But I get your initial legal point.

 

Way back about seven years ago, I looked at my own personal situation in regards to my music collection and basically reached the same conclusions. I had begun traveling frequently, and no longer wanted to be weighed down by a huge physical collection. I cherished my meticulously and expensively accumulated vinyl in particular, and up to that point would never have considered parting with it. But it simply was no longer practical to own and maintain it.

So first, any regrets? In a word, no. Prior to divesting myself of my vinyl and CDs, I went to a tremendous amount of time and trouble to "virtualize" everything. That meant needle-dropping all the vinyl and ripping all the CDs to hard disk - tremendously tedious, but worth it so to retain the actual music. I even went to the trouble of buying a large format scanner and scanning all the artwork - including album covers, labels, and any inserts or extras.

I needle-dropped the vinyl at 24-bit, 44.1 khz. Some would say I should have gone with a higher sample rate, but I found this to be a necessary compromise to preserve hard disk space - not as plentiful or cheap in 2007-8 as it is now. And as others have already mentioned, I made sure to rip all the CDs in lossless format.

I didn't go crazy as far as equipment or ripping methods go - just used iTunes for the CDs, and a good basic vintage turntable/tube receiver setup for the vinyl. The results were adequate for my needs.

I sold all the more desirable pieces on Ebay, and unloaded anything else either at Amoeba or via Craig's List. I remember getting about a buck each on a bulk sale to one individual for most of the CDs at the time.

How do I feel about the decision now? Fine, absolutely. Having the whole collection at my fingertips in virtual form has been a boon in time savings, efficiency and flexibility. And being a lot closer to retirement age than the original poster probably is, I feel it was an absolute necessity to 'cut the physical media cord' and plan for other needs in life. In fact, I hope to find the time to carry out the same exercise with my photos and other hard copy documents at some point.

And please, none of this moralistic crap about keeping the music while selling the media. I've spent literally thousands of dollars supporting the music industry. If someone wants to call the FBI to come arrest me at this point, have at it...

 

That is perfectly said!

I salute your philosophy on music and downsizing – I think it's great and I can only encourage you to pursue it. You'll probably feel better and freer in the end.

I come from a different generation, I grew up on mp3s in the late '90s to early 2000s and only discovered the joys of physical media (be it CD or more importantly, vinyl) some 10 years ago. Older people who shake their heads at young people being into vinyl seem to think that it's about making a fashion statement, when it fact it's probably just as much about having something to literally cling onto in this increasingly immaterial world we are living in. And who are they to judge – they already had their fair share of vinyl!

Which brings me to my next point: whenever you will listen to your music on Spotify or whatever other service you choose, you will always have the remembrance of those CDs and records you had – even the smell will be still stored in your brain. That memory will not leave you, even after those CDs are long gone from your possession.

 

I empathize. I'm really having trouble affording the upkeep on this property, a large, poorly insulated, old house on a 9 acre wooded lot. If I bight the bullet and move to Spartanburg, I'm going to have to dump at least 50%, if not 2/3 of my collection. I've already ripped my CDs, but it would literally take a lifetime to try to needledrop my records. Heck, it would take weeks just to cull them.

 

Here here.

 

Truly valid point, of course. But – that point is being made more and more irrelevant by streaming services like Spotify. If our OP is a Spotify subscriber, then he already has legal access to all of that music that is stored on his old CDs, no? Sure, my point is deliberately grey-area, but it goes to show how truths that were completely valid a few years ago are becoming increasingly blurry nowadays.

 

I understand and respect what both of you are saying, but I look at the entire chain of events... Yes you legally purchased the CD but if you make a digital copy and then sell the physical product the other person is getting the music without paying anything to the artist. Therefore the only way to keep the artist from being completely screwed is to make it so that whoever owns the physical media is the only person who is legally entitled to the music.

Otherwise whenever a new album comes out I could technically buy it, rip it and then "donate" the disc to one of my friends... and when he's done with it, he can "donate" it to one of his friends, etc. I mean, if we really wanted to get creative we could setup websites that specialize in "donation trees" where people from around the world could "donate" there "unwanted media" to others and search a database for others with "unwanted media" that they don't have in their collection.

 

Is there a possibility of physically storing it somewhere 'just in case'? Rent a safe environment. On another slightly irrelevant track, make sure that your will covers your physical music collection and that someone you trust knows where it is if you decide to keep it.

 

I just don't get this kind of logic. If you purchase a car and then sell the car, you no longer own the car! The only difference with music is that technology allows us to make a perfect copy of the product before we sell it. Just because we can do it doesn't make it right. I've spent thousands of dollars going to see Paul McCartney concerts over the years, I'm sure that makes it fine for me to download all of his "Archive Collection" albums through binary newsgroups. No wonder the vast majority of artists are sick and tired of the music business... in the digital age what they have spent a lifetime doing no longer has any value.

 

I'm with you. I didn't entirely grow up on MP3s, but I definitely came to vinyl later in life. For me, vinyl is great for collecting. It's big and has great artwork and you can handle these giant discs full of music, that you play with a stylus! It's a great experience.

I never felt that way about CDs. CDs were just the things I needed to hear my music. No emotional attachment whatsoever. And now with streaming services and increasingly cheap hard drives/cloud storage, CDs seem beyond pointless.

 

I understand what you are trying to say. However you do realize artists make NOTHING on the sale of a used CD. Zilch. Someone who legally buys nothing but used CDs or vinyl does not help an artist. Someone who has a subscription to a streaming service actually does more. Basically if it's all about doing the artist right you better be buying 100% new product, physical or digital. And I sincerely doubt that's the case here or anywhere else.

 

Every time one of these threads come up I get slightly closer to ditching (almost) everything... Houston summers mean high air con costs to keep the vinyl sweet, toddler limits listening time etc, but I can never take the final step so this latest thread on the topic is quite engaging.

I think the selling to a store is sooooo painful - have done it a few times with select items and you just get taken - something you get $5 for is on the wall the next day for $50. Hello 'prickly'-named store here in H-town!

eBay makes me nervous - people are pretty vicious on there - I got a bad review for very unfair reasons.

I have a huge section of my vinyl collection set aside to sell but every so often look at it and find a few records that I think I must be crazy to think of selling.

I guess my ramblings here symbolize the conflict between keep and sell. Can never decide conclusively.

 

About a year ago I got rid of a lot of CDs (which I first ripped to iTunes plus ... 256 Kbps AAC) and records (which I had digital versions of). I have a few regrets but they're mainly OCD leanings (which was one of the reasons I did it in the first place).
Besides a few slightly nagging regrets, I'm actually very happy about freeing myself from my hoarding alter ego.

One day at a time

 

Hello,

R1. Even if you store data on a remote hard-drive, you're still going to need a back-up copy, usually to a hard-disc, or blank DVD, so you will still have storage space issues eventually. If you save your files to FLAC or waveless, they're HUGE...And people question the sound of MP3, so you create other problems...And you'll need more space.

R2. Don't do it ! Keep the known treasures you really want / love, & open a market stall for a couple of Sundays, & see how you go selling the excess off.

R3. You'll quite likely end up buying them again, as you'll see something special really cheap, & then you have to follow up with the discography...

I understand the need to reduce excess to find space...What about building something in your roof ? There's usually an access panel...I'd consider adding a support for across the main-beams, & then loading your stuff onto it. You may want to repackage your gear into plastic bags etc to keep the elements, animals, & dust away.

There's also the illegal "torrent" downloads that you can use to replace what you've sold off. I'm in no-way saying do it, but millions of folks do ! I've often heard something that's been downloaded by a friend, only to then go & by the CD.

I hope you don't have to lose too much, & good luck whichever way you go.

Cheers,

Gregster

 

I recently sold my whole CD collection to Music Magpie who are a company here in the UK who buy CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray discs and video games from you. I made around £130.00 GBP (200.00 USD).

I did this because I no longer ever played CDs. All of them were copied to my PC and my back-up hard drive as I now play all my music digitally on my phone via headphones or my Bluetooth speaker system. They were just taken up valuable space in my house. Playing music digitally is just so more convenient than loading different CDs all the time. I can play my files on whatever and wherever I want. It also lets me listen to music on the go as well.

However, I made sure all of them were ripped to my PC and my back-up hard drive in FLAC before I sold them. I used dBpoweramp to do this. I also scanned all the CD booklets with my scanner/photocopier so I can still view them on digital devices, such as my PC, tablet or smartphone (a bit like iTunes digital booklets). I highly recommend doing this if you're someone like me who like artwork, booklets and liner notes (such as the credits).

Before anyone starts moaning about me selling CDs and keeping the files and scans... I paid very good money for those CDs over the years. They were all new when I bought them and the money I got from Music Magpie for them was about 25% of what I originally paid for them. I also don't share my files with anyone else.

Since I sold my CD collection I have still been buying new CDs. These are now gradually starting to build up again and I dare say that I will sell these as well at some point soon. I do this because I only listen to FLAC files if I can help it and try to avoid lossy files. Certain online music download stores have started to offer FLAC files to purchase which is a good thing, but they still don't offer as much variety as what you can get on CD. Also, these online stores usually offer no digital booklet/liner notes etc.

To directly answer the question in the title of this thread - no I don't regret selling my CD collection, although I just hope I have that same opinion in five years time.