RedEye
If technophobia has kept you out of the MP3 player revolution, a new group of services is making it easier to go digital.
For a fee, time-saving services such RipDigital and LoadPod will convert your CD collection into MP3s.
For $129, RipDigital will convert up to 100 CDs into a digital music library DVD that can be transferred to any computer. RipDigital provides FedEx packaging for customers to ship their CD collections to the company’s office in New York. Orders are filled in seven to 10 business days, depending on the size of the order.
“We convert thousands and thousands of CDs a day,” said Richard Adams, founder of RipDigital. “It takes the average person several weekends worth of time to convert CDs at six to 10 minutes a CD. This way, it takes them a total of 10 minutes. If your time is worth anything to you, it’s a pretty good proposition.”
LoadPod offers a similar service exclusively to iPod customers. LoadPod representatives will come directly to customers’ homes to pick up their CD collections and iPods. Rather than producing a music DVD, LoadPod uploads the music collection directly to a customer’s iPod. After about five days, the representative returns the player and CDs and also will come into the house and upload the music directly onto the customer’s home computer so they can make new playlists later.
The service costs $1.49 per CD for 50 to 99 CDs, $1.39 per CD for 100 to 199 CDs and $1.29 per CD for 200 or more discs.
“When we started out, it was a whole new kind of thing, but each month that we’ve been in business, we’ve gradually grown more popular,” said Bill Palmer, president of LoadPod. “Everyone that hears about us says they love the idea, so we think it’s just a matter of getting the word out on our service.”
But loading CDs onto your player is just the beginning. Customizing your personal music library means organizing songs into playlists. And music download sites are happy to help with that.
Sites like Musicmatch, Napster and iTunes make it easy for users to share their playlists. Musicmatch lets friends e-mail each other playlists for free, and its AudioDJ feature designs playists based on users’ favorite artists.
ITunes enables users to post their playlists through the program so that other users can review their choices and download the songs and listen to them for free. Napster lets users browse and copy playlists from other subscribers and check out what other users are listening to in real time.
If they find a member with particularly good taste, Napster users can save the name and monitor their music collection.
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snelson@tribune.com
