As someone who has purchased music at Amazon.com, you might be interested in turning those CDs into MP3s. Rather than spend your valuable time ripping your CDs, let Riptopia do the work for you.
Just send your CDs to Riptopia via padded/protected, prepaid, and insured spindles. In a few days, Riptopia will return your new digital music library on data DVDs along with your original CDs. You’re now ready to enjoy your perfectly portable, easily sortable digital music library for loading onto your iPod, computer, or music phone.
Leaving aside the fact that the music I most recently bought from Amazon, I bought as MP3s… and the observation that it takes about five minutes to rip a CD for free these days, is this even *legal*?
The RIAA claims that ripping your own CDs to MP3s for your own personal use is illegal. And remember back in 2000, MP3.com offered essentially the same service — giving you the MP3s of the songs you owned — and was sued into oblivion for it.
While you ripping your own CDs for your own personal use may be legal, it’s easy to think of a future where the US government at the behest of the RIAA subpoenas the names and addresses of every Riptopia customer. At $9000 per track and lots of 100-200 CDs, an average use of this service could run you 9 million dollars in fines when they take you to court.
Guess I’ll just rip my own CDs, thanks. The music companies have way too much influence with the government to make something like this at all safe to use.
Ah, good ‘ol Canada. I like our music laws here much better.
Music industry money can buy Canadian politicians as readily as it buys US ones. Sooner or later, they’ll buy enough of Parliament to push through laws even worse than ours… they’ve been trying and trying. So far, Canada has stood strong, but how long can you hold out?
Lemme think… buy CD online, wait for it to be delivered, put it in a Jiffy bag and post it to Riptopia, wait for them ripping it and sending it back to me…
or
download the albums directly in a fraction of the time.
Hmm, that’s a tough one. Even leaving aside the whole “Is it legal?” argument.
Besides, don’t most PCs come with Windows Meedia Player already onboard? Which will quite happily rip your CDs free?
This business model is so shaky that it makes me wonder if Amazon / Riptopia aren’t trying to force an issue re RIAA, maybe?
I believe their service, given that their price points are for 100 and 200 CDs, is for people with significant collections who don’t want to spend a weekend ripping (as I did). They don’t expect people to just send them a couple of CDs at a time.
Are they doing this to provoke the RIAA? That’s interesting — I hadn’t thought of that. Even though, I doubt it. I suspect they have an agreement with the RIAA not to sue over this, since they just recently inked deals with the labels to sell DRM-free MP3 downloads.
Still, given the litigious nature of the industry and their hunger to sue their customers, there is no fracking way I would EVER send them a CD to rip, no matter HOW much time it would save.
Branyanu and I spent a day with 4 computers ripping our collection. If there had been a reasonably priced alternative for stacking up a few spindles and shipping them off to be ripped I may have taken advantage, but I would have had to have been damn sure that I was going to get all that stuff back.
As it is I can’t imagine using that service more than once for legitimate purchases, as additional CD’s are just ripped to the library as they are purchased, and adding them doesn’t take a whole lot of effort.
It’s not any better here in Singapore but the action taken is slightly different. We don’t send out thousands lawsuits like you guys do in the US, but just randomly haul one kid now and then to court and charge him with an amount so huge that he can never possibly imagine to pay to make an example out of him.
Anyway, do you rip your CDs to mp3s or flac lossloss? I’m kinda stuck between the two. I can tell the difference on *some* tracks between the two through ABX testing, especially stuff with lots of strings and orchestras, but I hate to just have a few albums in a different format. Also, mp3 is just so much easier to backup due to size.
Oh, they do that here, too…
I hate the RIAA so much! Mainly because I used to have a record contract. The RIAA doesn’t give a damn about the artists. What a joke “oh the poor artists are getting ripped off” I just roll my eyes whenever I hear that. Not that I am for piracy … I actually don’t download much not in several years. The guys i work with all download movies and music though.
There was a case where they sued and some moronic judge ruled that a computer didn’t count as a personal recording device like a tape deck and therefore wasn’t covered as fair use, which to anyone who understands technology at all is a ridiculous statement. I don’t know if that decision has ever been overturned. I couldn’t find who made it.
Anyway I use WMA lossless compression. You can hear the difference on certain instruments like cymbals, and moreso in say jazz than in pop music. Unless i’m just being a snob and fooling myself into hearing the difference 🙂
I rip my CDs to high bitrate Ogg Vorbis files because they sound better than MP3s, work on my player (iAUDIO X5), and have loads of nerd cred.
It’s not the job of the RIAA to protect the artist or serve the customer. Its purpose is to be the junkyard dog that can be mean and nasty without necessarily reflecting poorly on the companies of which it is comprised. It’s a straw man target of derision, and when it has outlived its usefulness, they will disband it to the cheers of their customers, and make something new in its place.