How much would you pay someone else to rip your CD's?

Just curious, I keep getting correspondence from Moondog Digital and he wants me to write a big article about his RIP service, which costs anywhere from $1.50 per disc to $4.00 per disc (!) for his premium service.

I know we've written about some fairly expensive hardware in the past, but I think this is really crazy. I just can't fathom someone with 2500 CD's paying someone 10 grand just to RIP their collection, and take the chance that they won't get their CD's back in the proper order, etc, etc.

Not to mention the shipping and insurance AND trying to convince Fed EX that you want 40 thousand dollars for the boxes containing your CD's that they've lost or damaged.

Your thoughts, gang?

I would not pay, but there are many people who's time is worth that kind of money. People will pay for all sorts of things just so they do not have to do it.

"I have $10k, what amp should I buy"

Local store has so many people come in, want HT, ask how much, write the check, and never listen. People with money.....

Personally, I am not into it, as I am not into the iPod or music servers. However, I do know that 3-4 years ago venture capitalists were seriously looking into this, expecting a huge area of growth. I am not sure it ever happened, as I think this industry is still pretty fragmented.

As to pricing, not everyone charges as much. Ripitdigital.com charges quite a bit less. Some enterprising teenagers can possibly do it for less also.

RIP-off service?

I wonder what the difference between standard and premium service is, apart from $2.50, that is

Seems to me that there is potentially something illegal here. I think profiting from copying a disc, even if it's a disc owned by your customer constitutes commercial use in a manner that could be considered a violation of the rights of the artist/manufacturer...thoughts anyone?

I think that pricing is NUTS! I've been ripping my own, but can understand why folks who value their time and/or are less computer savvy, would pay (maybe $1/disc tops) to have somebody do it for them.

Maybe he charges a premium for "audiophile rips" with the green magic marker tweak applied!

Personally, I think this is a BRILLIANT scheme. It's about time some resourceful techno-Robin Hoods started liberating funds from people with more money than sense. :bowdown:

As far as somebody's time being worth it to use such a service, this is pure, unmitigated nouveau-nobility laziness. You rip the disk the first time you listen to it, and it's done. You're going to spend an hour listening to it anyway, right? Just hook your laptop to a good DAC, and listen to it WHILE IT'S RIPPING, the first time, and you're done with it, for chrissake. In all practicality, it doesn't take ANY "extra" time to rip a CD, if you are going to listen to it anyway. The stupidity, techno-illiteracy, and laziness of the nouveau-nobility never ceases to amaze me...

The only REAL advantages to paying someone else to do it is that you get bragging rights with your other nouveau-nobility cronies that you've paid thousands of dollars to some serf to do it for you, and you don't have to take the time or expend the mental energy to actually acquire a fundamental grasp of the technology you're using. It takes FAR less time to set up a computer to rip a CD than it does to prep an audiophile LP for playback on a turntable, so the whole "time is money" argument is pure, unabashed, bald-faced BULLSHIT and has no basis is the reality of the time involved in the procedure.

I call full-scale "shenanigans" on anyone forwarding the premise that there are actually people to whom this service is cost-effective, and defy ANYONE to prove to me, using cost-benefit analysis to prove it...

Anyone who makes enough money to pay someone $4 a disc to rip their CDs and is to lazy or technologically illiterate to do it themselves doesn't deserve to own the technology required to play digital music anyway, IMO.

Personally, I think they should insert subliminal suicide messages into these people's tracks. Clear out the deadwood, get 'em up against the wall, and all that.

Come the revolution, I think this company will be donating their client list to the mobs with the pitchforks and torches. Or at least I would HOPE they would--it would be the only right thing to do, after all...

I wholeheartedly applaud any company that can make a decent buck on the laziness, stupidity, and technological incompetence of the nouveau-nobility. BRAVO!!!:clap::clap::clap:

DrJRapp said:

Seems to me that there is potentially something illegal here. I think profiting from copying a disc, even if it's a disc owned by your customer constitutes commercial use in a manner that could be considered a violation of the rights of the artist/manufacturer...thoughts anyone?

Click to expand...

Good Point! These companies cover their behinds. They say they do not hold onto the music, but just rip it. However, if I were automating the process, I would get a hard drive and load every possible cd on it to save time. Then, I would just makes copies from this master hard drive/ database.

From ripdigital.com -

The Philosophy:
RipDigital supports the intellectual property rights of recording artists, understands the importance of copyright protection, and is opposed to the illegal distribution of counterfeit CDs, illegal music downloading or sharing of copyrighted digital media files.
RipDigital actively encourages the responsible use of digital music by including uniquely identifiable information in each track converted. RipDigital supports a consumer's privilege to enjoy their music in all formats.

From ripitdigital.com -

RipIt Digital music is very aware of copyright issues and proactively takes steps to protect the rights of the artists and music labels. RipIt Digital does not hold a copy of the customer’s music. We require all our customers to take responsibility for the ownership of their CDs and agree not to upload their music onto file sharing networks.

Dreamer said:

Personally, I think this is a BRILLIANT scheme. It's about time some resourceful techno-Robin Hoods started liberating funds from people with more money than sense. :bowdown:

The stupidity, techno-illiteracy, and laziness of the nouveau-nobility never ceases to amaze me...

The only REAL advantages to paying someone else to do it is that you get bragging rights with your other nouveau-nobility cronies that you've paid thousands of dollars to some serf to do it for you

Personally, I think they should insert subliminal suicide messages into these people's tracks. Clear out the deadwood, get 'em up against the wall, and all that.

Come the revolution, I think this company will be donating their client list to the mobs with the pitchforks and torches. Or at least I would HOPE they would--it would be the only right thing to do, after all...

Click to expand...

But Richard,
How do you REALLY feel?
LMAO:ROFL:

I would certainly hope no one here, gets on Dreamer's bad side.

And if that last post did get on Dreamer's bad side.....I am not sure how he did it technically, but that post was actually done by Bernard!

After ripping my extensive collection, I can certainly understand why someone would pay to have it done.

BUT......would I? Absolutely not.

Would most of the iPod toting teens that only care about one or two of the latest released hits? Don't think so.......

Would most audiophiles (eg. David, above) that haven't touched music servers yet? No, not here either.

So who would? Really, I think the service is just a tad ahead of its time. When music servers become commonplace then I think there will be a huge market. But for now, people with music servers tend to be already technically savvy and rip their own. Then there's the high end music servers such as Sooloos that come with ripping.

And questions remain too - what would people do who use this service and then but another CD? Do they have to send their NAS and each single CD they buy back to the ripping service?

Another important issue is backup - does this service offer backup to tapes or the like?

And what about tagging. How do they do that? To your specs, or to they just use whatever FreeDB throws at them? This significant - especially for Classical, as we discussed in another thread. How about the quality of the rips? Do they gaurantee perfect checksums? Probably for the "premium" price, because as we know - ripping a scratched CD in full "paranoia" mode can sometimes take longer than playing the thing!

I think there would be a market if the service was locally located and you could take the collection there yourself. Definitely. I'd even consider using it, but only at the lower end of the cost spectrum. Consider this - you buy 20 new discs, take them to work with you, drop them off in the morning, get them all shoved onto a USB memory stick for $10 and pick them up at lunch. How easy would that be?

Richard - very true, but only for single CDs - it can be very daunting to see 2,000++ CDs sitting on a shelf that *ALL* need to be ripped. I'd hate to be in that position again. Heck, I've got tags only to re-do for some of my collection and that is daunting enough. Two more issues - 1: A lot of people's music servers are in a different location to the listening room. In my case, at totally opposite ends of the house, and 2: A lot of people want their entire collection on the server BEFORE they play them. This makes for easy call up and to ensure they can take full advantage of services and plug-ins such as MusicIP and LastFM.

I think the ripping could be done for less money (and perhaps more to your own spec too) by giving your collection to a local teenager in school holidays in your street. Pay 'em 50c per CD. If someone had offered me $1,000 for a few days of mindless work when I was 14 or 15 I would have jumped at it!

Dreamer said:

Personally, I think this is a BRILLIANT scheme. It's about time some resourceful techno-Robin Hoods started liberating funds from people with more money than sense. :bowdown:

As far as somebody's time being worth it to use such a service, this is pure, unmitigated nouveau-nobility laziness. You rip the disk the first time you listen to it, and it's done. You're going to spend an hour listening to it anyway, right? Just hook your laptop to a good DAC, and listen to it WHILE IT'S RIPPING, the first time, and you're done with it, for chrissake. In all practicality, it doesn't take ANY "extra" time to rip a CD, if you are going to listen to it anyway. The stupidity, techno-illiteracy, and laziness of the nouveau-nobility never ceases to amaze me...

The only REAL advantages to paying someone else to do it is that you get bragging rights with your other nouveau-nobility cronies that you've paid thousands of dollars to some serf to do it for you, and you don't have to take the time or expend the mental energy to actually acquire a fundamental grasp of the technology you're using. It takes FAR less time to set up a computer to rip a CD than it does to prep an audiophile LP for playback on a turntable, so the whole "time is money" argument is pure, unabashed, bald-faced BULLSHIT and has no basis is the reality of the time involved in the procedure.

I call full-scale "shenanigans" on anyone forwarding the premise that there are actually people to whom this service is cost-effective, and defy ANYONE to prove to me, using cost-benefit analysis to prove it...

Anyone who makes enough money to pay someone $4 a disc to rip their CDs and is to lazy or technologically illiterate to do it themselves doesn't deserve to own the technology required to play digital music anyway, IMO.

Personally, I think they should insert subliminal suicide messages into these people's tracks. Clear out the deadwood, get 'em up against the wall, and all that.

Come the revolution, I think this company will be donating their client list to the mobs with the pitchforks and torches. Or at least I would HOPE they would--it would be the only right thing to do, after all...

I wholeheartedly applaud any company that can make a decent buck on the laziness, stupidity, and technological incompetence of the nouveau-nobility. BRAVO!!!:clap::clap::clap:

Click to expand...

One things for sure, when you have an opinion you aren't bashful. Ripping CDs as you purchase it isn’t overly laborious or time consuming but when you looking at a library of several thousand at 5 minutes per, that’s a different story.

A modest collection of only 1500 will take 5 full days to rip. Using their service at $2.50 a CD would cost $3,750. Depending on what an individual makes and how busy they are $3,750 may not be that unreasonable – more than I’d be willing to pay but I have time and didn’t feel compelled to do it all at once.

I guess my point is that if you have the resources and lack the time or patience to do it yourself this could be a valuable service.

tonepub said:

Just curious, I keep getting correspondence from Moondog Digital and he wants me to write a big article about his RIP service, which costs anywhere from $1.50 per disc to $4.00 per disc (!) for his premium service.

I know we've written about some fairly expensive hardware in the past, but I think this is really crazy. I just can't fathom someone with 2500 CD's paying someone 10 grand just to RIP their collection, and take the chance that they won't get their CD's back in the proper order, etc, etc.

Not to mention the shipping and insurance AND trying to convince Fed EX that you want 40 thousand dollars for the boxes containing your CD's that they've lost or damaged.

Your thoughts, gang?

Click to expand...

To answer your question Jeff, those prices seem high. Especially $4 which is about half the cost of many CDs. I would think that a slidding scale pricing model would be more reasonable. Something like 1 - 500 @ $1.50 per, 501 - 1,000 @ $1, 1,000+ @ $.50. Heck, I only pay $.25 a bottle to store wine at Vintrust for a month and that takes on going floor space, a temp/humidity controlled environment, etc. But if they can attract customers at their price point more power to them.

Now if their pricing were .25 per cd all I can say is I wished i'd have known about it when I was loading my MS750.

taylode said:

Heck, I only pay $.25 a bottle to store wine at Vintrust for a month and that takes on going floor space, a temp/humidity controlled environment, etc.

Click to expand...

Yes, BUT it doesn't take an individual's *TIME* - worth a lot more than floor space.

On further thinking, many people purchase the same music many times on different formats. I've heard folks here purchasing a CD copy, a vinyl copy and a SACD copy!

I would never do something like that, but for people that do, all a music server really is is another "format" - if people are prepared to pay full price for different formats, $4 starts to sound quite cheap for their "music server" copy!

Heck - at least the record companies aren't getting the "licence" money for a fourth time over! Now - just don't get me started on record companies re-selling back catalogue but in the next minute getting all hung up about free downloading!

amey01 said:

Yes, BUT it doesn't take an individual's *TIME* - worth a lot more than floor space.

Click to expand...

Well here is where I can get in trouble commenting on what I know nothing about, but what the heck. I would think that they woud have some sort of bulk loader that would feed the CDs needing to be ripped thereby minimizing touch labor.

taylode said:

Well here is where I can get in trouble commenting on what I know nothing about, but what the heck. I would think that they woud have some sort of bulk loader that would feed the CDs needing to be ripped thereby minimizing touch labor.

Click to expand...

Likely so. But it still takes time to take the CDs out of jewel cases, load the loader, ensure proper operation, tag if necessary. Then there's capital cost, running the thing, power costs, maintenance costs, et al. Don't forget unboxing all those CDs and re-packaging them in the correct jewel cases. Labour costs = high. Capital costs = high. Overhead costs = high.

DTB300 said:

I would not pay, but there are many people who's time is worth that kind of money. People will pay for all sorts of things just so they do not have to do it.

Click to expand...

It's a simple economics question. If your time is more valuable doing something else, like making a few hundred thousand dollars for instance, then the opportunity cost of paying the 10 K is a good investment. If the files are ripped in real time, which to my ears does sound best (premuim service, maybe) then that is 2500 hrs. of actual time, though clearly this service would use multiple devices to play multiple discs at once, still a substantial investment in time.

But the point I'm trying to make (and apparently you folks are all completely missing) is that if someone doesn't have time to LISTEN to a disk while ripping it themselves, then where the hell are they going to ever have time to listen to those 1500-disc libraries in the first place? Why not just rip the discs you listen to, and get it done over time, WHILE YOU'RE LISTENING. It's not like these nouveau-nobility types are going to be prevented from doing what they mormally do while listening to the music just by running some ripping software WHLE THEY LISTEN anyway...

The only thing is that if they rip it themselves, they don't get the twisted satisfaction of knowing that some wage-slave serf got paid minimum wage (and is probably working just under 35-hour weeks so he isn't eligible for medical benefits, to add insult to injury) to do their work for them.

Lazy, techo-illiterate nouveau-nobility. Let's just call a spade a spade, and stop trying to justify laziness, stupidity, and oligarchical senses of entitlement....

The French people were on the right track in 1789...