Kill Your CD Clutter Once and For All with Rip2iPod

Still got a ton of CDs you haven’t ripped into iTunes yet? Got hours/days of free time? Probably not. And if you have kids, definitely not.

The average iPod/iPhone owner has less then 5% of their CD collection ripped into iTunes.  Here is why: If each CD takes about 6 minutes to import and add on at least another 6 mins for checking song tags and adding album artwork. Ripping the average CD collection will take hours if not days of your time.

I’ve had this stack of CDs sitting on my desk for months (see image above). My wife keeps saying stuff to me like “Get rid of this clutter. Rip ’em into iTunes and sell ’em.” The “stack,” as we started calling it, contains such classics as Hootie and the Blowfish (hers), Iron Maiden (mine) and Bob Marley: Legend (we have 2 copies). Even though the stack is a mix of both of our CDs, the importing process has become my job. But we have kids… and I barely have time to think anymore. This stupid blog post you’re reading right now took me 3 months to finish.

But I finally got all my CDs imported. How? I outsourced it.

Starting at $100 for 100 CDs [and prices going down from there] this company called Rip2iPod rips all your music CDs into a pristine digital library. They even tag the tracks and add in album artwork. I mailed them a box of our CDs and they sent back a full archive of our CD collection on DVD-ROM in MP3 format. I just dragged and dropped all my new MP3s into iTunes and was ready to go.

It was a win-win situation for me. Clutter gone. Soul Coughing, Metallica and Korn are on my iPod workout playlist. And my wife is finally off my back about the “stack” and blasting Michael Jackson‘s Off the Wall while cooking dinner right now.

Now I just need an easy solution for Handbraking my DVD collection to my Apple TV. Any suggestions?