Digitizing a Music Collection

[fidgiegirl]

DH is interested in digitizing his CD collection. We could then get rid of the physical CDs. Yeah!

Any tips for this? We will be working on a Mac with iTunes. We have never been much of music users on the computer/iPod so is there anything that would make our lives easier later on that we don't know now? Like tagging or some other method of organizing?

:thankyou:

[creaker]

Make sure you have good backups - hard drives die eventually.

[herisf]

How do you plan on listening to your music? You will need some kind of player such as an iPod or other digital player. I've been thinking of this too, and may get an iPod touch (refurbished from Apple).

Other than that, there are natural categories for your music - classical, vocal, new age, musicals etc etc etc. iTunes should be able to do multiple categories for you. You can basically label them however you want, but you and your husband should probably discuss broad categories at first.

And as noted above, be sure to back up, either to a disc or the cloud.

[fidgiegirl]

Thanks for the mention of backup. I finally automated it. Yippee!

[Madsen]

I haven't bought CD's in years, but I do still have one of those black binders full of discs from when I used to. I tossed the jewel cases a while back, and the binder doesn't take up too much space. I should rip 'em though since I don't hardly listen to them anymore, and I bet I would if they were in mp3 format.

[H-work]

I used my computer to play mp3's and podcasts years before I ever got a iPod. In fact, I often play them on my computer more than my iPod. They are playing in the background while I'm surfing the web, doing my finances, doing a project.

I wouldn't get rid of the physical CDs after converting them. Mine are tucked away in the back of a closet. It's dishonest to sell them if you are keeping a copy and against copywrite law I believe (I could be wrong). Giving them away or throwing them away may not apply to copywrite law but I still would want to have them in my possession.

[bae]

I've been using iTunes on my PC to do this for years, even without an iPod. The software is free, and works reasonably well.

If you want to listen to the music on your stereo, you can stream from your PC to your stereo using an Apple Airport wireless doohickey.

[leslieann]

My library accepts donations of used CDs and DVDs, then puts them into circulation. If I were to actually BELIEVE that my digital copies of my CD collection were safe and secure, I'd donate a bunch of CDs. But I am still a bit wary. Plus you lose a lot of audio fidelity with mp3 files; listen to your iPod on a good stereo, and then listen to the original CD. However, the blessed iPod is certainly VERY convenient.

[bae]

1) You have the option of telling iTunes how to import the audio and store them, you don't have to go with lame encodings, you can pick higher-resolution ones, which of course require more storage.

2) Donating your "used" CD after you've burned a copy is a violation of the copyright, here in the USA. It's the same as borrowing a CD from the library and duplicating that. It's theft.

[Mer05]

Worth doing! I ripped mine years ago. I now keep two backup drives, one off-site. (I did not start this until after my computer crashed with no recent backup and I had to re-rip everything.) The original discs are in binders in my closet - they don't take up much space, and occasionally I find a track that didn't rip right and can go to the source and fix it.

Now that the industry is catching up, I buy most of my music as MP3s to begin with.