By Jo Best, 27 July 2004 17:05
NEWS For those with a huge music collection, a lazy temperament and a newly acquired iPod, one company thinks it has the answer.
US-based LoadPod is offering music fans with more CDs than time a way to get all their favourite tunes onto their iPod without having hours of ripping ahead of them. LoadPod will come to the door, pick up the CDS, rip all the tunes to an iPod and return them within five days.
The service costs $1.50 (it's only available in some states of the US and Canada at the moment) per CD and a $20 pick up fee, which is waived for those who want more than 100 CDs ripped. The CDs have to shop-bought rather than home-made, so the company can avoid any tricky legal wrangling over piracy.
The start-up company is getting into a very healthy market, according figures from to analyst house JupiterResearch. According to their statistics, the digital music market will be worth $270m in 2004, growing to $1.7bn in 2009.
MP3 players will also follow the same upward tangent, with shipments rising by 50 per cent in 2004 to more than five million units shipped, says Jupiter.
Comments
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1. anonymous
I wish someone offered the same for vinyl - I've got thousands of records I'd love to get onto cd/mp3
2. Roy Corneloues
With regards to vinyl. I use <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00006657R/ref%3Dbr%5Flf%5Fli%5F1%5F3/026-1564777-1967655" target="_blank">Audio Cleaning Lab Deluxe 3.0</a> from Magix. Removes hisses & clicks, auto splits albums, does time based recording for radio programmes and can export to MP3 as well as CD. However I don't know of a third party service that will do this for you.
Makes you wonder whether downloading MP3's for vinyl you already own could be classed as legal. As there is no way of them knowing that you didn't record it yourself...
3. anonymous
Available to the whole of Europe:
Rip Factory (www.ripfactory.com)
I haven't tried it as I had already ripped all my music but it looks pretty good if "your time is money"!
4. Nick
It's nice to know that for once, us Brits got there first. I got all my CDs transferred on to my iPod by WePod, a company in Soho which charges £1 a disk. They collect the iPod and CDs from your office and return them 5 days later fully installed and catalogued. Great service! www.wepod.co.uk
5. Mark Williams
I was a pilot customer for a company called Encoda - http://www.encoda.co.uk/ – who did my 750 disk collection in five days from the time it was picked up to the time it was dropped back.
They also tested what they call their concierge service on me: came round, catalogued all of my disks, checked them for scratches, cleaned them, packed them into a protective container. And then, repacked them into the cases when they came back.
All for less than £1.60/disk. I learnt about them third or fourth hand, but I heard they're also going to be doing some package deals when they sell you the iPod, charge it and load it as well.
Also, heard something about vinyl - but didn't interest me as I never really developed a vinyl collection.
6. anonymous
Wonder if there is such a service were someone could not only rip my music for me but also help be deside what it should be encode into.. should I use MP3/AAC and should i use 128 or 192? all I know is I would like to have my music collection in my pocket so I can lissen to it were ever I am...
7. anonymous
Ahem, I would take issue with the use of the word 'Lazy'. If you have plenty of time on your hands, and you have a small CD collection, fair enough.
If you are 'cash rich & time poor' (me !) and have a decent size CD collection (me again!), then it's a different story entirely.
I'm gonna be 'lazy'!
8. anonymous
Yeah and there's a company in the UK doing the same thing. Based in South England, they have some interesting deals and give aways going right now to promote their services.
If your based in the UK check out their website www.encoda.co.uk
9. Jeff Underwood
My suggestion would be to use AAC at 128Kbps. This gives as good a quality as MP3 at 160, and preserves the ful rated capacity of your iPod.