No you really dont have to keep them around,……and I thought of a perfect solution
SEND THEM TO ME!!!!!!! problem solved

@slice 2: man, you really set yourself up for a full slate of “mom’s basement” jokes.

So far, there’s no comparable (electronic) text medium to replace the book, so we’re stuck there. Plus, I (and the vast majority of readers) aren’t likely to give up on hard books. They’re weighty, but they’re worth it. The Kindle may be OK at some point in the near future, but I’ll take a book over the screen any day. CDs, on the other hand, are needless unless for car use.

two flights in 90-degree heat humidity?

try FIVE flights in 5-degree cold wind!

you can put the cd’s in books and that cuts down on the bulk…

What I want to know is where you got those shelves? Those look really convenient.

1:14 PM 9/8/2008
—————-
@ Sammy

In the article he says: “[The] Picture above is not the MetalSucks Mansion. Thanks Google Images!” As far as the ‘Single-Coil-Stratocaster = Punk’ and ‘Double-Coil Humbucking-Superstrat (or Gibson Les Paul for Guitarists with deeper pockets) = Metal’ theory is concerned, it doesn’t quite apply here.

@ Bleorg

You’ve got the right idea, but are on the wrong side of the track: The MetalSucksMansioneers need to send those CDs, Vinyls and Books – TO ME!!! Okay, fine…I’m willing to share – but only if you are too!

@ Slice Two

I totally agree…Boxes of comics, shelves of records and alpha-beta ordered books do look great, and people do go ‘ga-ga’ over all the neat stuff you’ve managed to amass, catalog and put on display…Although in response to Sammy’s comment to you, I don’t see how that automatically means that you live in your ‘mom’s basement’. You could be living in a condominium but with an awesome collection too…The door swings both ways.

@ Doug

CD’s are ‘useless’?!

What if you’re the type that doesn’t download music ‘illegally’ but you don’t like to purchase actual CD’s? You’ll likely be stuck with an iPod/portable-mp3-player and purchase music from iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, etc. And that’s all fine and dandy unless one day, your Hard-Drive goes ‘blank’, or you accidentally delete your mp3′s (wma, aac, ogg, flac, whatever) or some evil virus/trojan installs itself on your machine and deletes it for you?

The last time I checked, iTunes didn’t offer Me a free ‘re-download’ (but that was over a year ago) in the event that I accidentally deleted a song that I legitimately purchased. So I’d either have to ‘steal it’, or I’d best own a copy of the actual CD (or also make a backup copy on a portable hard-drive – but those could suffer data loss too).

…As far as a “comparable (electronic) text medium” thingy is concerned…Geez, I’d have to agree with you if only the .pdf, .lit, .html, .doc, .rtf and .txt file-formats didn’t already exist for a decade or two.

Although, I will agree, reading a ‘physical’ book usually has it’s advantages, like better formatting, and fewer spelling errors than an electronic version of the same thing (i.e. Reading Aleister Crowley’s “Moonchild” typed up by some guy on the internet is more likely to suffer some corruption/errata whereas for a few bucks, I could get the real deal that is ‘true(r)-to-the-source’)…And I love my hardcover books, so even though I download books, I still buy plenty of ‘actual/physical’ books (ironically – now – more than ever) for numerous reasons, but what if the ‘lights went out’ tomorrow? I suppose having an electronic book wouldn’t do me any good then, but a physical book indeed would.

But then again, books (depending on which ones – may) cost too much money, much like CDs, which is the reason why people stopped buying (as much) and starting illegally downloading (a helluva lot more) in the first place.

And I happen to be an extremely lazy fella, so I like to read ‘hands-free’ (like when I’m lying down) and so I’d either need a device that holds the book for me (and hopefully turns the pages as well!) or I’d need to sit my lazy ass up and hold the book in my hands, which would be bad since it would cause me to expend more energy, which in turn would cause me to focus less on ‘reading’ and more on ‘holding’ the book properly – and frankly, I’d much rather spend that energy ‘jacking-off’ while reading (Oh by the way, if you do know of such a ‘book-holding’ device, please do let me know – seriously!!!).

Bottom line I use my hard drive for virtually everything (music, movies, games, porn, books, typing, etc.) but I’d keep my CDs – if for nothing else – as a backup. I’d suggest you do the same.

AWB, as far as accidentally deleting your hard drive or whatever, I would recommend Rhapsody To Go. It’s basically 15 bucks (the price of a CD) a month, to “rent” music, so that you can put whatever you want on your MP3 player (no iPods though, but there are better players, we all know that), whenever you want, and not have to worry about re-downloading, or illegal stuff, or paying too much, or whatever. I change out the music on my player almost daily (I listen to it all while delivering pizza), and by now I’ve heard a hell of a lot of stuff, without paying a ridiculous price. It’s the perfect service, really. Plus, as far as listening on your computer, you can listen to whatever you want, whenever you want as well, as long as you’re connected… Of course, all of this is very, very high quality. Also, the album art shows up on my player whenever I play a song, and I can make it cover the screen to see it better. Therefore, I have absolutely no use for CDs.

It’s a loving burden

honestly, at the moment, all my cds and comics nad crap ARE at my moms place! hahahaha. my little NY apartment couldn’t hold all that awesomeness right now… as soon as we get a bigger place, all that shit is going in its own dedicated room!

@ Luke

You make some really good points.

But not all music is readily available on these services (i think iTunes is still the largest, but even they don’t have a lot of ‘underground’/'self-produced’ music – yet – it takes time, I know). Lots of smaller bands don’t do the whole ‘internet-downloads’ thing…On the flip side many ARE adopting it.

Also, I believe a considerable portion still prefer to ‘own’ as opposed to ‘rent’. Even still 180 Bucks a year for Rhapsody on the surfaces does seem like a good deal!

But here’s another thing no one considers…Mostly because no one cares about either, but let’s just imagine that they did for a second: It’s called AUTOGRAPHS!!!

Imagine that you (again this sorta thing is usually rare, unless you go to your favorite bands shows frequently) meet one of your favorite bands, and asked them to autograph your copy of their CD? (Obviously assuming they’re kind enough to do so as well). Now if you owned the CD, you would have something they can sign (If you’re a girl you can get them to sign your boobs I guess, hehehe) but it’d be kinda awkward to ask the band to sign you’re iPod or something. In which case you’d likely come up with an excuse to not get an autograph at all like “I don’t give a shit about that sorta thing” to justify.

Many people wear ‘metal-t-shirts’ so I suppose they can have those autographed as well, but those shirts usually cost a lot more than the CD’s [i.e. Recently I purchased a whole bunch of black/death metal records for $3/CD (29 of them to be exact, $108 total with shipping) but the T-Shirts for those same bands cost $17-$21] so I’d probably just buy the CD given the price. So CD’s aren’t that expensive if you go to ‘smaller-shops’ or buy from record labels directly – effectively eliminating the middle-man (Bestbuy, Walmart, HMV, etc. Other big stores that have a tendency to chard $16 for something that costs no more than $0.62 to make).

Another reason for Buying the actual discs is bandwidth/disk-space may become a bit of a concern (depending on how much you download – some do a little…Others are a bit more compulsive; guess which of the two category I fall into?).

I don’t see anything wrong with subscribing to these services or purchasing through Amazon/iTunes, but this doesn’t make CD’s ‘useless’.

Good portions of the world, even where metal is popular – don’t have cheap access to the internet…Or in some regions, no internet at all – but metal is still popular somehow (South America, Philippines, Middle-East, etc.) Also, even in regions where the internet is available, not everyone owns a computer (for whatever reason). For those people (who likely at the very least possess minisystem-stereos/CD-players) CDs are quite ‘useful’.

Plus, halving the album art is usually nice (and I’m not just talking about the front and back covers, but the panels of the booklets too).

I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just saying there’s more than one way to view a situation/subject. CDs might not be a popular purchasing option, that’s because most people don’t want to pay a penny and just download without paying (myself included) but I still buy CDs of bands I really like to support them so they can continue to make music in the future, but the record label cheats the band out of most of their earnings, so I’m not sure if it does have much effect.

I am still a flagwaver of the “I like to have the physical object / look at the art” argument. Fuck iPods.

I’m not sure what’s wrong with some of you, but having an iPod in my car, with the ability to play ANY song from ANY album at ANY time or shuffle them or select any combination from my WHOLE collection of music makes, for me, the Mp3 player the greatest invention since disposable contact lenses.

Forgot another benefit of the iPod or other Mp3/4 player. How many times in the “old” days did you leave the house wondering, “What the hell am I going to listen to today?” only to leave with nothing, leaving yourself hostage to the – gasp! – radio? Or you’d grab some CDs (or tapes if you go back farther) and find yourself immediately bored.

Fast forward to today. You put your whole iPod on shuffle and some song comes on that you barely recognize or have some faint memory of. “Holy shit! I forgot how fucking good that album was!!” This leads to you looking the band up online and finding they’ve put out two albums since you last listened to them and you rediscover them.

Sure, I’ll keep my CDs for nostalgia, periodic liner note reading, etc. But I have multiple back up devices so, I don’t even need them for that. Ever forward. Ever forward.

i used to have somewhere between 600-700 cds and thought i would never get rid of any of them. then i moved them 4 times in the span of a year and a half and started to rethink that. ive been progressively weeding down my collection since then, and will not stop until im down to the absolute essentials.

if everyone was smart, they would sell all their cds now while they are still worth a couple dollars, and wait a few short years, cause CDs will eventually be dirt cheap, and youll probably be able to buy back everything and more for close to nothing.

Vince,
I took the plunge and did the big purge last year after having the same thoughts..
Got rid of everything. Felt great.
My music library is 100% digital now with a cloned HD backup.

I had 500 VHS tapes in my walkup apartment, too..why?
There’s a video store directly across the street…AND I have netflix and cable on demand!

They’re all gone now too.

At this point I feel like holding on to CD’s is just nostalgia at this point…like the VHS collection.

Try these guys:
http://www.feedyourplayer.com/
They’ll take your old discs and swap you brand new ipods preloaded with your own music so you don’t have to sit around ripping/burning…
Pretty cool service.
(And no I don’t work for the company…)

After suffering a minor hard drive failure, and having overall problems with dying electronics from major manufacturers, I see the value of having the real deal. However, if storage is your problem, I suggest you ditch the jewel case. Put the CD on a spindle and put the booklets in a box. Then recycle or ebay the jewel cases. Storage problem solved.

On the other hand books suck. They are really big. One book is bigger than 3 iPhones. And it is just one book. If there was a good book reader for the iphone (I’m thinking make them pdf and ability to quick bookmark, plus customize background like black background and white font) you could put like 100 books on your iphone. The kindle is a good idea but a bad investment. It is like the Tom-Tom. It is brilliant, but in a year or two your cell phone will do that anyways, so why bother?

Also old books really suck. I’m reading an old book and the pages are coarse and dry, and really irritating my skin. It is an unpleasant experience. Now a good book reader for a smartphone would never hurt my hands.

The future is now people!

Incidentally I was thinking of blogging almost this exact thing today. Weird…

I buy ALL of my albums, and I rip them to my computer. I put them on shuffle at home, I take the 6 newest CDs to my car (6-disc changer!) or whatever 6 I feel like. I have a Zune and an iPod and fuck them both, they sit in my car and do nothing but probably break from excessive heat by now.

I came to this discussion pretty late, so I’ll ignore the ongoing conversation and just respond to the post.

Think really hard about whether the electronic medium is really cheaper. If you’re looking to replace your physical CDs, then you can’t rip to anything other than FLAC, as you’d be losing both quality and the ability to support the format further down the line.

Also, if the files are lost somehow, say to a hard drive failure, you wouldn’t be able to rerip them without the CDs. So you’ll need a RAID system, at least RAID1 but preferably something a little more sophisticated like RAID4.

Factor in the cost of this hardware, the frequency at which you’ll have to replace it, the electricity cost of running them on your server… I think you’ll start to realize that owning CDs is still the cheapest way to go.

Of course, I pay for the media server route just for its convenience! But it is something that one pays for.

all you people going digital is great. because of you I can get a hell of alot of cds really cheap off amazon and ebay now. i’ll pay 99 cents for the cd there instead of for just a track and just deal with this oh so evil space issue as it comes.
who needs to pay for dvds anymore with netflix around? honestly save the 20 and just get it from them… how many times can you watch a dvd? or you digital guys and gals buy a dvd burner and join netflix and burn everything