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CD Ripping Service?


Thaddeus Smith

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I'm doing a bit of brainstorming and "how can I make money to support this hobby?" thinking. I received quite a good response from my "Digital Music - How I Do It" thread and I'm wondering if there's a market locally here (at first) to do this type of mundane service for you guys.

 

A quick search shows prices from $0.69/disc to $1.39/disc.

 

I'm thinking an even $0.60/disc, plus the cost of your storage device.

You would ship me your CD's and either: buy the drive and ship it to me, ship a drive with your CD's, or paypal me funds to buy the drive.

 

I would then rip the CD's into FLAC, mp3, m4a, wma, Wave, or AIFF formats (or a combination thereof). For formats that support it, your files will be properly tagged against the MusicBrainz database. Album art would be embedded in the files and included within each directory. Music would be stored as Artist > Album > Track.

 

Time to complete would depend on the number of discs, and total funds won't be required until the music is ready to be shipped back. Return shipping is included in the cost.

 

Minimum of 150 CD's per batch. No gimmicks, no Audiophile buzzwords, just me doing the grunt work of converting your vast CD libraries for modern playback devices. You do get more of a bespoke service with some good 'ol fashioned 1-on-1 support.

 

Is this dumb? Is anyone willing to give it a shot?

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I'm assuming that the iTunes database is proprietary and generated through their direct interaction with the Labels. MusicBrainz is like the wikipedia of albums catalogues.

 

http://musicbrainz.org/

 

There are actually multiple sources that will be potentially used for creating tag info, but in my experience MusicBrainz has been the most accurate and exhaustive.

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Time vs money...

 

Sounds like a reasonable price (to me).  And based on reading through your "Digital Music" post, it sounds like you'd do a great job.

 

But I'd be less inclined to ship 1000 CD's through UPS/FEDEX/USPS and wonder what might happen if the box(es) were damaged or lost.  You might also consider your own liability if someone's entire CD collection was lost/damaged while in your possession (just a thought, not trying to dissuade you).

 

I've been putting off ripping my own collection just due to the time factor.  But it's something I hope to start and complete this year.

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Agreed, and I'm open to suggestions. Customer would determine the preferred shipping method and insurance value, which I would mirror on return. Signature/tracking mandatory. I've thought about a picture/e-mail acknowledgement system.. customer e-mails picture of contents before shipping and I acknowledge. I e-mail a picture upon opening and customer acknowledges before any work is done. Then again before shipping, and once more upon arrival. It's a bit arduous, but I'm not expecting that many parallel transactions either.

 

Lawyers of the group, help me out with some sort of indemnity statement?

 

The same inherent risk exists when shipping $3k tube amps, no? The best I can do at this stage is to establish agreed upon terms and a thorough paper/picture trail of the merchandise.

 

Also, you would only be charged for CD rips that meet a defined AccurateRip error threshold.

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Time vs money...

 

Sounds like a reasonable price (to me).  And based on reading through your "Digital Music" post, it sounds like you'd do a great job.

 

But I'd be less inclined to ship 1000 CD's through UPS/FEDEX/USPS and wonder what might happen if the box(es) were damaged or lost.  You might also consider your own liability if someone's entire CD collection was lost/damaged while in your possession (just a thought, not trying to dissuade you).

 

I've been putting off ripping my own collection just due to the time factor.  But it's something I hope to start and complete this year.

 

BTW, I'm just NE of McKinney and I'd be happy to personally receive/deliver and avoid shipping your collection.

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Agreed, and I'm open to suggestions. Customer would determine the preferred shipping method and insurance value, which I would mirror on return. Signature/tracking mandatory. I've thought about a picture/e-mail acknowledgement system.. customer e-mails picture of contents before shipping and I acknowledge. I e-mail a picture upon opening and customer acknowledges before any work is done. Then again before shipping, and once more upon arrival. It's a bit arduous, but I'm not expecting that many parallel transactions either.

 

Lawyers of the group, help me out with some sort of indemnity statement?

 

The same inherent risk exists when shipping $3k tube amps, no? The best I can do at this stage is to establish agreed upon terms and a thorough paper/picture trail of the merchandise.

 

Also, you would only be charged for CD rips that meet a defined AccurateRip error threshold.

Really looks like you have considered it alot already. Should be a learning curve to suss out any pitfalls, while learning customer concern. Trial and error and learning by doing to a limited customer base initially to get the complications out of the way, or come to some conclusions, may be in order. Good Fortune if you decide to!

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Are DVDs and BR possible keeping the 5.1 sound and playback via Oppo 105? I would like to have a unified source for 500 DVDs, 100 BR, 100 CDs and the several thousand aiff files I have.

 

i'll need to investigate. Oppo stripped away .iso support from the players, which was the traditional method for maintaining archival copies and playing them back.

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Is there any copyright concern about recording for money bla bla??

 

I'm not profiting from the music or redistributing the files in any fashion. You own the CD's and are permitted to have archival copies in your possession as long as you own the CD's. You're only paying for labor.

Edited by Thaddeus Smith
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Funny you bring this up!  I've thought of the same sort of thing off and on just because I really enjoy ripping CD's and collecting the cover art, proper tags, and everything.  Part of the excitement when I get my new shipment of music from Amazon, ebay, or where ever, is when I get to start that process and then safely store the CD away. 

 

The way I would do it would be a lousy business plan because I'd make about a buck fifty an hour at the most.  I use EAC which is very slow but accurate.  There some OK taggers but you always have to check it all and sometimes manually tagging is your only choice.  It sucks when they screw up the artists and don't have the information correct especially for classical music.  You might want to spell out how you would tag and the details of your naming scheme.  Sometimes, I'll take a picture of my album art because of all the low res cr@p out there.  I'd like to be able to read the writing on the picture after all!

 

Shipping could be a concern and taking care of peoples music is certainly a high priority.  There are other businesses that offer this service but are more expensive.  I think your price and the fact you are known here would help you.

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Are DVDs and BR possible keeping the 5.1 sound and playback via Oppo 105? I would like to have a unified source for 500 DVDs, 100 BR, 100 CDs and the several thousand aiff files I have.

 

i'll need to investigate. Oppo stripped away .iso support from the players, which was the traditional method for maintaining archival copies and playing them back.

 

Yea, I traded off my Oppo that still maintained the iso capability. I do have a Mac Mini that might be useful; yes/no?

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AMG, GD3, SonataDB, Musicbrainz, and freedb will all be sources for tag queries. I only mentioned Musicbrainz because I thought it was the most widely known.

 

I do have a scanner, so album covers should be 100%.

 

Any disc that doesn't rip properly, tag properly, or get appropriate album art won't be charged for.

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Are DVDs and BR possible keeping the 5.1 sound and playback via Oppo 105? I would like to have a unified source for 500 DVDs, 100 BR, 100 CDs and the several thousand aiff files I have.

 

i'll need to investigate. Oppo stripped away .iso support from the players, which was the traditional method for maintaining archival copies and playing them back.

 

Yea, I traded off my Oppo that still maintained the iso capability. I do have a Mac Mini that might be useful; yes/no?

 

 

Possibly, I'm just not sure if I have adequate equipment to rip DVD/BR's. Take SACD's for example.. you've got to have a particular model PS3 and software hack it in order to rip that type of media, so it's obviously not something I want to include.

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When I moved cross country the first time I didn't have room to bring my CD's in their cases so i took them out and stacked them on a ½" dowel rod, saran wrapped it and then bubble wrapped that and put it in a regular moving box.  I cut the rod to 18" and fit 4 of them in the box. It worked great. I had close to 1,000 in the box

Edited by finallygotmyheresies
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