It has been a while i was thinking about this (good) idea and i recently discovered that a US company dmp3 is providing it.
Imagine you have about 300cds at home. You have just bought the brand new Ipod. You wish to through in it all that music in digital format; in theory it is very easy : you just have to digitize every single disc and then transfer it from your computer to your Ipod. You can do that yourself of course using one of the many mp3 converter programs (like DB poweramp): it will take you about 48 hours non stop (300*10 min/CD = 48h) non including the transfer time from your computer to your mp3 player (even at usb2 speed or firewire add at least between 4 to 5 hours)
And this is where the service provided by dmp3 starts to be relevant:
- they come home, take your cds,
- digitize them (including the full tags of the album and songs so you know what you are listening)
- even provide you with a fully organized library for your computer.
- Finally they provide them to you in a digital format either on DVD or in your Ipod directly.
Saving time and hassles. Cost: all included about 1$/CD (10% of your CD). Is it worth? personnally i think so: having started to digitize my own library i can assure you it is really a nightmare when you have a lot of CDs.
See how it works here. Discovered also though Darrenbarefoot’ blog you can also try Ripdigital competing service
The problem is that those services are only available in US. Logistics is the limit of that brand new service.
My idea was to launch a similar and improved service in Europe through a franchise model in partnership with distribution network. I believe in the relevancy of that service, legal issues are quite limited and market is not small. Anyone tempted?