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What to do with CDs?

I recently plugged in my CD3 to compare with my streamer, and to ripped copies .... then listed it for sale (now sold). I still have the CD's, but no great way to play them. This post will help me to choose a storage method.
 
Have started to rip to Mac , I'll keep some as playing through my upgraded CD/SACD and sounds very good. If you can donate to PFM then I'll do that, If anyone has more details of how to go on please let me know 👍🏻
 
I ripped all mine a decade ago and put them in the loft in some boxes. if I had 1000s I would have ditched the cases. The reason for keeping the digital media is to ensure I had the right of ownership of the ripped tracks. Ripping and selling is equivalent of theft.
 
BrendanD said:
I ripped all mine a decade ago and put them in the loft in some boxes. if I had 1000s I would have ditched the cases. The reason for keeping the digital media is to ensure I had the right of ownership of the ripped tracks. Ripping and selling is equivalent of theft.
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That's exactly why I kept mine - all 6500 of them !
 
Darren said:
I have a few hundred CDs and I cant get through them all. How do you listen to so many? Surely you have CDs you've never listened to?
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Yeah, there's going to be some bought in job lots i've not got round to yet, but to be honest there's five of us who listen including 3 teenagers discovering music for the first time and it's nice that they and their/our friends can come round have a leaf through and pull out something they haven't heard for ages or have never heard and have a listen. I think that's one of the beauties of a physical collection.
 
Tony L said:
The CD market is like any other market. The good stuff is already worth lots, the run of the mill stuff never will be. It is already a collector market.

PS If folk want to get a little insight into the collector market here’s an 1800 page thread over on Steve Hoffman’s site:

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Yeah, but from what I'm seeing at record fairs the run of the mill stuff is no longer all bargain basement. I wonder if the way a lot of records that were sold in large quantities originally went from 50p to a fiver, CDs maybe about to do something similar. Mind you, you know way more about this music dealing lark than I do so I could be talking total nonsense.
 
tiggers said:
Yeah, but from what I'm seeing at record fairs the run of the mill stuff is no longer all bargain basement. I wonder if the way a lot of records tat were sold in large quantities originally went from 50p to a fiver, CDs maybe about to do something similar. Mind you, you know way more about this music dealing lark than I do so I could be talking total nonsense.
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Yes, we are beyond the bottom of the dip IMO. Whilst sales aren’t exactly brisk my baseline sale price is £4 now, it was £3 a couple of years ago. I’ve done a lot of stockpiling, some thanks to kind and substantial site donations, so have stuff to list for years yet! I’ve also been squirrelling away the really good stuff myself for a very long time now, so I’m prepared for any market rise!

One thing I’ve noticed is a lot of the crazy-bargain big box sets that were originally released at about a quid a disc are now worth a lot. If I sort my Discogs collection by descending value I have several CD boxes on the first few pages (Quartetto Italiano Complete Philips, Miles Complete Columbia Albums & Complete On The Corner, Kraftwerk Der Katalog, Gould Complete Bach, Beatles In Mono, Roxy Music Complete Studio Albums etc). Obviously some of these are big and were fairly expensive, but they are all worth a lot more than I paid new.
 
Tony L said:
One thing I’ve noticed is a lot of the crazy-bargain big box sets that were originally released at about a quid a disc are now worth a lot. If I sort my Discogs collection by descending value I have several CD boxes on the first few pages (Quartetto Italiano Complete Philips, Miles Complete Columbia Albums & Complete On The Corner, Kraftwerk Der Katalog, Gould Complete Bach, Beatles In Mono, Roxy Music Complete Studio Albums etc). Obviously some of these are big and were fairly expensive, but they are all worth a lot more than I paid new.
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That's interesting. I wonder if it's because they were relatively big ticket items that some people wanted at the time and missed out on, or whether they're simply a way for folk with deep pockets to acquire a complete discography.

They're not something I really have much interest in - I find them a bit overwhelming.
 
paulfromcamden said:
They're not something I really have much interest in - I find them a bit overwhelming.
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Some of those rank amongst my favourite music purchases ever. The Miles Complete Columbia Album Collection was exactly the deep-dive into his career I needed and totally changed my view of fusion/electric jazz. The Complete On The Corner box took some hunting down, but is absolutely amazing (I have the full set of those ‘Complete…’ boxes, but that one is the high-watermark of a great series). Similarly the Quartetto Italiano box has got a lot of use and helped me explore chamber music. I held off buying for a long time, but finally snagged it on Amazon at around £45 IIRC (it’s Discogs ‘high’ has another zero!). It is just a great box, so much amazing music in there, another I learned a lot from and still enjoy playing. I’ve got the big Herbie Hancock Columbia box too, and that’s another that has been played a lot and opened several doors. That said I’ve got a lot of classical boxes that haven’t left anything like as much of an impression and I’m sure will eventually end up being filtered out via the shop.

PS Here are some Miles Davis CDs:

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It isn’t all of them, I have more!
 
Another vote for rip them and keep them. CDs are worth peanuts, but ought to be more valuable considering their original prices. They might go up in value - not like vinyl but a bit at least.
 
tiggers said:
Yeah, there's going to be some bought in job lots i've not got round to yet, but to be honest there's five of us who listen including 3 teenagers discovering music for the first time and it's nice that they and their/our friends can come round have a leaf through and pull out something they haven't heard for ages or have never heard and have a listen. I think that's one of the beauties of a physical collection.
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Leafing through to find something you haven't heard for a while (or, in your case, ever) is definitely a physical collection pleasure I agree
 
It's not the format that's important, it's the act, the recording and the individual product; those are what make something collectable.
 
Largely depends on your lifestyle. I rippled all mine to server. Now I have been told - legal position is you must keep the physical media as while it was technically illegal to rip them - the industry wouldnt prosecute - but a lot of rips where you have sold / never owned the physical disks is more likely (even if it is a hypothetical risk). That aside - technology changes - would a rip 10 years ago be better / worse than one today? Dont know - does the rip simply "copy" all the data - or is there some conversion process? I dont know - but I bet you someone out there will claim they can hear the difference between rips on different devices.

I have stuck my disks away - there are 1200 or so off them - just in case of legal issues - and just in case I need to re-rip them. I dont particularly like having them on view (I like a pretty minimalist view) but have a nice cherry chest of drawers full of media.

I guess like always - you pay your money (literally) you take your choice.
 
kensalriser said:
It's not the format that's important, it's the act, the recording and the individual product; those are what make something collectable.
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Exactly so. Kind of Blue will always be worth something, because of the content. However the charity shop dross at 10 for £1 will only ever be worth that, because most of it is Atomic Kitten / Eternal / Take That and while there will always be a nostalgia market for the next generation's Pinky and Perky there will be very few people wanting to collect routine 80s/90s/00s pop when you can get it on Spotify or even easier by tuning into Greatest Hits Radio / Absolute 90s / etc.
 
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Ok I've just about reached my limits with CD ripping. And sorting. I've decided I'm keeping all but the 200 or so that I'll donate to charity.
I'll address some issues raised by heading...

OBJECTS / MEDIA LIBRARY. For those promoting the joys of a tactile media against streaming, I have thousands of LPs, and I just don't have the space for two media. I do, however, very much miss having a digital library, but I'm ok with having that on a computer, so long as I have lots of little pictures of the albums. dBpoweramp was useful when ripping as it has a lot more access to images than Apple. For my digital source I use an iMac, so it's a big enough screen to display the library nicely.

QUALITY. After ripping a couple of hundred CDs to ALAC I did do a comparison with a CD and thought oh bollocks, don't say the rip is inferior and I have to start again with WAV! I went back and persuaded myself that I was imagining the difference, but expectation bias was high here. I really wanted to persuade myself there was no difference, so as not to render my labour futile! I may revisit at some point, or I may decide that life's too short.

ETHICS. For those of you waving the strong arm of the law about ripping and selling, I was always going to keep the ones I'd ripped! But now I've sorted the collection I'm going to put them all in storage and revisit later.

I did have a mind to sell the nice boxed sets (Miles bootlegs etc) which are all available on Qobuz, but I think I might as well keep the collection together.

It's surprising how few have ended up in the box of those unavailable on Qobuz. Even the majority of my obscure Evan Parker cds are streamable now. It tends to be old electronic compilations or dance mixes that fall off the streaming readar.
 
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