To go back to my wine storage example, every bottle that they have in their inventory is photographed, has a bar code lable attached, and is matched up with a description of the wine, it's maturity level, etc. In other words, lots of up front labor. Not to mention they pick up and deliver. I can't believe that the capital costs for CD ripping would exceed the capital costs for wine management. Check it out if you'd like at www.vinetrust.com. If Vintrust can provide all the services that they do. It should be cheaper than a $1.50 to rip a CD.
How much would you pay someone else to rip your CD's?
- Thread starter tonepub
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To go back to my wine storage example, every bottle that they have in their inventory is photographed, has a bar code lable attached, and is matched up with a description of the wine, it's maturity level, etc. In other words, lots of up front labor. Not to mention they pick up and deliver. I can't believe that the capital costs for CD ripping would exceed the capital costs for wine management. Check it out if you'd like at www.vinetrust.com. If Vintrust can provide all the services that they do. It should be cheaper than a $1.50 to rip a CD.
amey01
Well-known member
To be fair, you're missing a point too. I tried to explain it in my post.
For a music server to be useful, you need ALL your music on it, to call up at will. What are people supposed to do? Not get the full benefit of their investment in a music server until they've played every disc in their collection? That could take years!
And then in the mean time, they want to play something - Check the server first - is it on the server or do I have find the disc to rip/play? May as well not have the server in the first place!
And then there's my other point that things like MusicIP are useless until you've got your whole collection on there. This is the true power of a music server - to have it suggest other items in your collection while you listen. Or (at a whim) play something you are thinking of. There's no point if you then have to run and find the disc!
And finally, as I said - what if your server is down the other end of the house? (intentionally in my case, so I can't hear the thing). I can't imagine walking to the other end of the house for the next 2,000 CDs I play!
My point is, when you buy a server you want all your music on it - yesterday.
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amey01
Well-known member
Oh, and one more point - for some it's not just a matter of rip 'n' play. They want to use specialised ripping software (such as EAC), manipulate the tags, adjust settings for re-reading and accuraterip, etc., and meticulously scour through the checksums and finally store them in a specific directory structure. I'm not too bad, but some people can get really anal!
Not really something you can do "while you listen"........Just ask JonFo!!
Not really something you can do "while you listen"........Just ask JonFo!!
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I wish we could get away from all this “nouveau-nobility” and “wage-slave serf” business. This isn't an SCA event or audience and it doesn’t add creditability to what you have to say. It's simply denigrating.
To you point about when would they have time to listen comment? I think by having a music server it allows you to listen to music during a lot more activities. Having a music server means not having to fiddle with CDs thereby allowing you to continue doing what you’re doing without interruption. Having a music server has been a game changer regarding my abilities to listen to music.
If you open you mind some you may find things aren’t so black and white.
tonepub
Senior Member
I agree with Taylode, enough of the conspiracy theories and class warfare.
On one hand it's free market capitalism at it's best. If people are willing to pay for his services, he'll stay in business. If they don't it won't. It's still someone's choice to try and get someone to pay for this, no one's pointing a gun at your head.
And I totally agree with Amey01, the whole point of having a music server is having ALL of your music on it.
Remember, this is supposed to be fun....
You're starting to become somewhat of a bummer dude.
Anyone who has a few more bucks than you do is part of an evil upper class, it's not quite that simple.
On one hand it's free market capitalism at it's best. If people are willing to pay for his services, he'll stay in business. If they don't it won't. It's still someone's choice to try and get someone to pay for this, no one's pointing a gun at your head.
And I totally agree with Amey01, the whole point of having a music server is having ALL of your music on it.
Remember, this is supposed to be fun....
You're starting to become somewhat of a bummer dude.
Anyone who has a few more bucks than you do is part of an evil upper class, it's not quite that simple.
amey01
Well-known member
Maybe so.....y'see, I don't know a lot either. I guess with wine though, there is a lot of double-up - one wine database for all customers. Also economies of scale - more people are storing wine than ripping CDs (at present anyway).
Now......back to topic......I've thought of an interesting proposition. Given this is a *business* and they'd be doing this all the time, how much double up do you think would be in the average man's CD collection. Once you've ripped a few CD collections, I'm sure you'd have 80-90% of the future discs already ripped.
I wonder if they guarantee they rip your *actual* disc? Or do they just give you the digitised files they ripped for someone else three months ago? Now, in this case, I'd expect it to be very cheap!! Maybe 20c per disc! Surely only a fool would be ripping those discs we all havehundreds of times, DSOTM, Patricia Barber et al.
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I agree whether it be ripping music or managing wine it all speculation on our part, which is probable what make it fun... no knowledge!
Your second comment would probably land them in trouble if they pay some hefty license fees; however, you're right it would really drop the costs as well as speed up turn around times.
tonepub
Senior Member
I think Amey01 is on to something, big time....
If they claim to keep a backup of everything they rip, who's to say that they actually Re-rip the same CD's over and over again....
And, what happens if you let them rip your cd's, they claim to have backup, you sell your cd's and five years from now this guy is no longer in business....
After you just spent 4 dollars a disc to rip cd's the used cd store guy gave you 2 bucks each for!
I'll keep my physical media, thank you. No conspiracy theory, just common sense.
If they claim to keep a backup of everything they rip, who's to say that they actually Re-rip the same CD's over and over again....
And, what happens if you let them rip your cd's, they claim to have backup, you sell your cd's and five years from now this guy is no longer in business....
After you just spent 4 dollars a disc to rip cd's the used cd store guy gave you 2 bucks each for!
I'll keep my physical media, thank you. No conspiracy theory, just common sense.
Craap, I have been boiling oil and manning the turrets all night long, does this mean there will be no pitch forks at the outter wall? Okay, back on topic, I can see where ripping CDs as a service, is not too unlike having your video tapes transferred to DVD or having your slides transferred to digital media, or having your negatives transferred to digital media or having your film printed. Those businesses have thrived and survived through the timeline of the various technologies and ripping CDs depending on the timing will most likely be the same. I may take advantage of it once I decide to go the media server route, I personally am just not there yet, I have to spend too much time patrolling the Wall.....and it ain't Pink Floyd's. Oh and while I am thinking about it, I would keep the CDs after ripping just in case the copy police came by with their little pitch forks.
tonepub
Senior Member
Keep the CD's as a backup of last resort. Hard drives always fail, someday and usually without warning.
amey01
Well-known member
We don't know whether he keeps backups or not, or did I miss a post?
My point about backups was really in relation to the fact that if someone has the technological inability to rip a few CDs, then they are also going to have the technological inability to keep high-integrity backups. That means they could easily lose everything. I was more alluding to the fact that he could possibly provide a tape copy of what he puts on disk, or at the very least, copy one disk to another independant disk for a small fee.
I guess this is distinct from whether this service just provides people with digitised copies of their collections, not necessarily from their actual CDs.
Legally, I don't think you can sell CDs you've ripped - the CD is the "licence", isn't it? I know nothing about this really. Anyone care to enlighten us? But I do know that I have no qualms about using BitTorrent to download FLAC files of music I already own on LP - am I wrong here?
My point about backups was really in relation to the fact that if someone has the technological inability to rip a few CDs, then they are also going to have the technological inability to keep high-integrity backups. That means they could easily lose everything. I was more alluding to the fact that he could possibly provide a tape copy of what he puts on disk, or at the very least, copy one disk to another independant disk for a small fee.
I guess this is distinct from whether this service just provides people with digitised copies of their collections, not necessarily from their actual CDs.
Legally, I don't think you can sell CDs you've ripped - the CD is the "licence", isn't it? I know nothing about this really. Anyone care to enlighten us? But I do know that I have no qualms about using BitTorrent to download FLAC files of music I already own on LP - am I wrong here?
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It’s actually becoming a storage problem to figure out where to stash 1,600 CD’s. And I agree, that’s the ultimate backup.
But to the original question: No I would (and did) not.
I rip while I do other things on weekends, so it’s essentially been ‘free’ time. The problem is it’s taken me the better part of eight years to rip the collection this way. Obviously the favorites went up first.
Any new CD coming in the door gets immediately ripped.
I rip discs to a folder on a separate machine than my server, when that folder reaches 4GB’s worth, I burn the contents to DVD as a backup, and then transfer the albums to my server.
This way I have ripped backups as well.
BTW- Been ripping to .WAV with EAC and Plextor drives all these years, so no worries about formats. Plus each rip process leaves a full .CUE sheet file so I can regenerate the CD or transcode to FLAC, MP3, etc.
To protect your Collection, I recommend following a similar process as I do:
The server storage is hardened configuration with RAID5 array for the files being shared. The loss of any single drive will not affect the storage.
The server is backed up regularly to an external RAID0 array on a removable external enclosure that’s turned off between backups.
The DVD’s made of the Rips are stored in a separate room.
Now that terabyte size drives are here, I copied the collection to one and it’s at my sister’s home in storage for off-site safe-keeping.
Which brings us to the point of these business. If they charge for ripping, I’d say their customers might have an expectation that they could ‘get back’ a set of previously ripped discs.
So in a way, one is paying for offsite safe-keeping as well.
amey01
Well-known member
This is exactly why some people might consider paying someone to do it! It took me around three months to do my collection of around 1200 discs (at the time when I started, about three years ago) - just by using spare time such as watching TV or whenever I walked past the computer on weekends. It wasn't fun, and I got many comments from my wife to the effect of "will you leave that fr1ggin' computer alone for just one day!!!". Oh - and shhhhh - I did quite a bit at work too......I had a pile of CDs in the corner of my office!
I keep similar backups of my server to JonFo. Every file on the server is transferred to another independant USB drive. I regularly take the other USB drive to work and perform a backup to a HP Ultrium tape which I then send down to Sydney for safekeeping at my parents' house. The idea is that I should never need the tapes as files could be transferred to a new server from the secondary USB disk, but it is nice to know they are there!
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