If you aren’t worried about obeying the law, why not pirate the music in the first place?

I’m all for digitising music, and compared to the cost of a CD, the disc space to store it (even uncompressed) is tiny…

… but once they’re converted, then the CDs need to go into a box in the loft, not to the garage sale.

Thanks for that suggestion. I just organized my CD collection (500 + ) earlier this year. Now that I see how much space it’s taking up, I was looking for some way to get rid of the jewel boxes while keeping the discs and inserts for future use (ie, if my hard drive crashes).

While the reviews on Amazon for JewelSleeves are positive, some have recommended the comparible Jazz Loft’s CD sleeves due to price. As you said, there are probably other alternatives, too.

FYI: When I organized my CDs, I used Google Docs to catalog them.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtAN5yLBiVOncmlpc1BERWxsamRFZnAtMkhGcl9MclE#gid=0

At the bottom of the spreadsheet, you’ll notice there are 4 tabs : “General Music” “Classical Music” “Spoken Word” “Other Compilations”

Probably not a perfect system, but “good enough” for a first attempt.

In Australia, it is actually illegal to rip the CDs to another medium. However, most people do it and it will probably be all right provided you KEEP the orginal disk, and DO NOT share the digital files you create.

Dick: It guess it looks as if you’re reorganizing your records. What is this though? Chronological?
Rob: No…
Dick: Not alphabetical…
Rob: Nope.
Dick: What?
Rob: Autobiographical.
Dick: No ^&*(‘ way.

All the discs are filed alphabetically and I’m ripping most of them to iTunes just for ease of use, since complete audio fidelity is not a major concern.

But I also have a considerable amount of classical music. I divided it up into categories as well: opera; piano; guitar; and then Composers, for the largest category of orchestral works.

For more ideas on organizing music, see “High Fidelity.” There are lots of fun things about the movie, not just the silliness with ways to organize music.

Of course, now we have everything on a hard drive and have sold the physical collection to Music Magpie.

What works for us is genre, artist. Genre runs the gamet of classical, rock, techno, easy listening, ethic, sacred, sound effects, movie soundtracks, jazz, etc. This has allowed me to find the duplicates in our large library and regift them to a friend with similar tastes.

So, your situation is something like this: You can hear that your CDs/mp3s do not sound as great as your records, still you’ve got rid of them. You’ve substituted your speakers for earplugs, just because your kids might break them. You think mps are less clutter because they take up less space. I’m not so sure.

Firstly, if you want great sound in a room, you put the speakers on head level, or above head level. Mine sit on the top of my shelves. I can’t reach them without raising my arms, so there is no way kids (or anybody, for that matter), could do them harm.

Secondly, CDs are, most likely, NOT more durable than records. Of course, there is no single-handed answer to the question of how long CDs last. Figures vary according to storage, type of discs, etc.
Have a look at this: http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/op.....What-35882
You can see that CDs have only been tested to last 15 years, and it is estimated (“guessed”) that they may last longer – but there is little experience (They’ve only been around for less than 30 years). More than 50% of recordable DVDs do not last 15 years.
Also, durability of your data does not only depend on your CDs alone. New versions for programmes are being developed all the time. New types of data as well. We currently use mp3s for music, but it has been explained in the comments already that mp3 is actually not a great format, and if you look around, there are many many others. About 15 years ago a lot of people still used floppy discs, and nowadays it’s hard to find a computer where you can put them into.

So with CDs or mp3s, you are very likely to find yourself ripping your information, storing them on a computer and/or external hard drive, sometimes burn them on CDs or DVDs, and then you find yourself repeating that process every couple of years because technology changes.
You’re gonna spend some time on mainting a digital library. If that’s something you enjoy doing, fine, if you actually hate it, I would say – not very uncluttered.

Thirdly, a fact we all know but find hard to admit: Digital information is worth nothing in an economical sense of the word. Mp3s can be multiplied a million times, distributed all across the world, CDs ripped and burned. You spend a lot of time ripping, filing, burning, storing things of which the financial value is nil.

So here’s me being in the defense for records: You’ve got a physical object that has a value. If you still bought records in the early 90s, you’re very lucky. They are among the most valuable items in music that you can have, because with the introduction of CDs there weren’t that many vinyl records produced. So hold on to them, their price can only rise.

We know records can last a long time. You can go to a shop or flea market and get a Beatles record from 1964 and play the music. 1964, that’s almost 60 years ago. Put your records in plastic sleeves. Clean the dust off the record and the needle before you play it, and you’ll be fine.

You can listen to records with headphones, too, if you don’t want to disturb anyone in the house.
But most importantly, you can educate your kids about great sounding music, supervise them when they want to listen to music, enjoy the songs together. Instead of you listening to mp3s on your earplugs alone. Ever noticed hwo crap smartphones sound? Go to a book shop and pick ANY musician’s autobiography: You’ll read that they became turned on to music because their parents used to play records when they were little and that influenced them.

As for physical clutter: I admit records can be cumbersome. They are large, heavy, should be stored standing upright – in short, they do take space. If that’s not for you, fine. But you could see it as a challenge against clutter: I’ve started collecting records only a couple of years ago. I’m gonna build myself an eclectic, flawless collection of music that I really love. No cases of
“OMG, I can’t believe you’ve got that cheesy Rick Astley Album”
– “Yeah, I know, but I don’t really listen to it, I just found that one song really great a couple of years ago”

Instead, a collection of great music that looks good and sounds great. I find that very uncluttered.

As a professional collection development librarian, I want to just pluck this piece out and repeat for truth.

Give your things room to breathe and grow. Rearrange when the system doesn’t work anymore.

If your collection is very large or broken up between several rooms, I do recommend a catalog of some kind, even if it’s just a spreadsheet with basic details. Don’t overthink it (don’t put, for example, shelf numbers – just the shelving unit or even the room) because this document, too, should have room to rearrange and grow, and editing it should not be unneccessarily frequent or fussy. A catalog/content list also helps if it’s neccessary to put some things in long-term storage.

And Rick is right; ripping copies for personal use and then passing the originals on to another owner (with or witout payment) is just as much technical copyright violation as the reverse. But if you do, or if you’re just thinning down the collection a little, please consider options for donating.(My workplace’s DVD budget is $500/year, y’all. I know individual families who spend more than that on DVDs, and we’re serving a community of 10,000. We have NO music budget, but a 1,000-plus title music CD collection, thanks to wonderful donors.)

I do wish I had a better place to store everything though. I had a coworker who bought a large portable CD wallet and stored the CD and booklet in the sleeves before tossing out the jewel case. That used to horrify me but lately I’ve been thinking about doing that. You really don’t need the jewel cases unless you think you might want to sell the CDs later on, which I don’t. I’ll definitely have to check out the JewelSleeves RP mentioned. Digitizing is great but I wouldn’t get rid of the actual CDs.

I’d be more interested in finding out about the cabinet they’re buying. I’m having trouble finding good storage for our optical media.