Keep CDs or not?

September 25, 2017 6:34 PM

I have ripped my many, many CDs to audio files, and now I almost exclusively listen to my music digitally music. Should I keep the CDs or get rid of them?

I have several hundred CDs. (No real rarities or anything.) My 2005 car cas a stereo with a CD player (but no aux jack, and an FM tuner is no good around here), so I have a dozen-odd CDs in the car that I play once in a while.

My music is backed up (twice!) to a NAS with mirrored drives, and also copied up to Google Music, so I don't see myself needing to re-rip the CDs any time soon. Is there any reason to keep the physical media, other than my irrational hatred of subscription services?

And if I don't need them any more, should I try to sell the CDs? Give them to Big Brothers/Big Sisters? Something else? (My understanding is that selling used music online is a fool's errand.)

Thanks for any advice on what's current these days,

posted by wenestvedt to Media & Arts (22 answers total)

I just put the CDs in binder organizers and keep them on a shelf in my office. The jewel cases went in boxes in the attic.

I was glad I kept them though. When I originally ripped my older stuff storage was more expensive than it is now, so I ripped using a lower quality than I really wanted to. Now that storage is essentially free, I went back through and re-ripped to FLAC which I couldn't have done if I'd dossed the discs.
posted by Dr. Twist at 6:43 PM on September 25, 2017 [6 favorites]

We ripped all our music, but we seem to mostly play the CD's that we have in jewel cases.

It's easier and more inviting to see the lists of songs, to just grab one and put it in the (old) CD player, and to select the track you want by pushing buttons instead of mousing/typing.

Plus it's really nice to hold and look at the jewel case while listening to the music, or to look at the lyrics or photos of the musicians printed in much better quality than a screen image.
posted by amtho at 6:45 PM on September 25, 2017 [3 favorites]

I separated out the CDs I had that meant something to me, from those that no longer were of value to me, and just kept the ones I cared about. I think I got rid of about 60%.

Now that I have small kids and gave them boomboxes, CDs are a lot easier for them to turn on and listen to by themselves, without the temptation of switching over to a videogame. I like them for that reason as well.
posted by umbú at 6:51 PM on September 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

Rip them then donate them to a thrift store or something similar. It's unlikely that you're going to be listening in a format where you'd even notice the difference between a lossy file and whatever format you ripped them in.

Think about how likely any reason you decide you might need a physical copy is vs the likelihood of that reason occurring. I'm willing to bet that all of those scenarios are fairly unlikely.
posted by Ferreous at 6:57 PM on September 25, 2017

I keep finding CDs I didn’t rip, or whose digital copies got lost. I just found the CDs for the Donna Summer anthology I bought 20 years ago, the digital files for which got lost somewhere. The two disk set is no longer sold. I re-ripped that sucker and have returned it to the heavy rotation to which it belongs.

Plus, the Prius has a six disk changer.
posted by lhauser at 7:02 PM on September 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

We kept ours, in binders. We tossed the jewel cases. They take up way way less room that way and to-keep-or-not-to-keep is much less of an issue.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:18 PM on September 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

I have about 1500 CDs that I’m in the process of ripping. I’m keeping the physical media of the ones that are deeply meaningful to me, long term perennial listens, and/or rarities. Unfortunately that still leaves me with about 800. It’s a start.
posted by matildaben at 7:21 PM on September 25, 2017

Originally I kept them in binders and threw away all the jewel cases.

Eventually I threw all the discs out. I hadn't touched any of them in more than a decade. I kept a few that I thought would be hard to find (like, some old Hello Recording Club discs) but anything commercial went in the trash.

If I somehow lose the mp3s, I am pretty sure I'll be able to replace them. It just isn't worth keeping for me any more.
posted by RustyBrooks at 7:23 PM on September 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

I ripped all mine and put them in CD-size file boxes. I kept the discs and the liner notes and artwork - I miss liner notes so much. They take up very little room and I was able to get rid of two big garbage bags of jewel cases.
posted by bendy at 8:16 PM on September 25, 2017

Keep them. You can always use another backup. You might not have Google Music forever.
posted by John Cohen at 8:17 PM on September 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

I have everything I want in digital format in ditto, so I am avoiding dealing with this by slowly churning through the CDs in my car. My car storage is messy and I live in a place with temperature extremes, so they eventually die, and then I take out a new round to play until their death. There are a handful of rarities I won't torture like this, and the better classical lives with a kitchen stereo, but most have just been abused in the car and thrown out at gas stations. Used CDs are so ubiquitous I don't feel very guilty about trashing them, and I also don't feel guilty about bypassing ripping them myself and "illegally" downloading stuff I have had in vinyl, on cassette, and then on severely bloody overpriced CDs which would "last forever."

This only works if you have a lot of albums you don't mind listening to a lot, of course. But if you have a bunch where you only like a couple of songs, pfft -- toss!
posted by kmennie at 8:21 PM on September 25, 2017

My partner and I both find the act of flicking through the cases of our CD's leads us to triggering memories and associations and playing things we otherwise wouldn't. The shelf space they take up is worth it to us because of this.
posted by deadwax at 8:45 PM on September 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

Get rid of all but the best.

And do not toss the jewel cases of those you save - although they could be recycled, even if you put 'em in the bin it's most likely they won't be. Also, they're part of what make CDs special.
posted by Rash at 8:56 PM on September 25, 2017

I hate to be that guy, but as an IP attorney, I gotta do it. (But IANYL, and TINLA!)

If you get rid of the CDs, then you don't have backups of your CDs any more; you just have pirated music. Doesn't matter that you didn't get any money for the CDs, etc. Thinking about it economically (which is not especially important, but still) you're adding supply and thereby driving down the price of those CDs. Which eventually gets around to hurting the artists.

Keep the CDs, put 'em in storage, whatever. Or ... hmmm, I wonder ... maybe if you destroy them, you're entitled to keep using your backups? I'm not sure. But I am pretty sure that, in the U.S., you don't want to get busted with a bunch of digital rips that you don't have the CDs for any more.
posted by spacewrench at 9:33 PM on September 25, 2017 [10 favorites]

Konmari that clutter! Life is nicer with less stuff.
posted by vignettist at 10:42 PM on September 25, 2017

I ripped all my CDs in 2009, then stored them in boxes until 2016 and never ever once missed having them. So I gave them away. I considered selling them but at best would get about $1/CD with a lot of hassle, so I jumped at an easy chance just to give them away to someone who had more time to sell them. And now they are gone. I do not miss them.

Unless you're a dedicated audiophile don't rip them to lossless, the giant files are remarkably inconvenient for space-limited devices like your phone. I get way more use out of a second copy I made with ~160kbps AAC.

I feel like I'm an Old even having an MP3 collection now, much less a CD collection. The future is streaming services with libraries you rent access to. (Ie: Spotify.)
posted by Nelson at 1:24 AM on September 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Before my last move I got rid of any CD that I could easily replace and only kept the ones that were either imports or out of print.
posted by Gev at 5:09 AM on September 26, 2017

I've got all my CDs in binders in a closet, and I trashed the jewel cases. I'm actually packing to move, but the binders don't take up enough space to matter, and I guess I'm old enough to still appreciate the value of a physical backup.
posted by COD at 5:17 AM on September 26, 2017

I've been thinking about this a lot recently. I no longer own any device that will read or play CDs (even my work laptop is now an ultralight model with no CD drive), and I mostly listen to music via Pandora, but I have three shelves of CDs taking up space. I haven't taken the step of getting rid of them largely because so many are pretty much irreplaceable and aren't online (like, local artists bought while traveling), but that's not necessarily a good argument for keeping them forever if they aren't being used.

What I plan to do is sort them and toss/donate all the mainstream, easily replaced (or found via streaming) CDs, and then box up and store the ones that are unusual or rare. My guess is that I'll never open those boxes and they will eventually get tossed, but I decided I would rather roll that decision forward a bit.

The point being, there may be a middle answer between "toss them all" and "keep them all," perhaps connected to some version of the Konmari question of "does this spark joy?", depending on the specifics of your collection and your feelings about them.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:02 AM on September 26, 2017

I chucked the cases (sorry Vitalogy) and crammed the discs and most of the pamphlet-style liner notes in a bigass binder like this. It takes up essentially zero space, and while I probably haven't touched any of the discs in a decade or so, my daughter and her friends recently had fun flipping through it and gawking at the 90s fashions. I think they even pulled a few discs to play in the computer, which is the only device in the house that even plays CDs anymore.
posted by Rock Steady at 6:31 AM on September 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

To get rid of your CDs, the PaperbackSwap people have a sister site for CDs swapacd.com and DVDs on swapadvd.com. You can exchange credits between all 3, so if anyone wants your old CDs, you may be able to turn that around into some free books or DVDs (minus your own shipping costs). You pay for shipping when you mail a CD to earn a credit, there are some transaction fees now and the popular stuff has waiting lists. This does involve keeping the CDs around for a bit, but you can give yourself a deadline, like anything that has not been requested in 3 months gets donated.
posted by soelo at 7:36 AM on September 26, 2017

But I am pretty sure that, in the U.S., you don't want to get busted with a bunch of digital rips that you don't have the CDs for any more.
The high profile cases of people being busted for pirating involve selling pirated copies or sharing online. OP is not planning to do either of those things. Many of them were civil suits and not criminal.
posted by soelo at 7:41 AM on September 26, 2017 [1 favorite]