For years, music is part of my life: music is my life! I told you before, no pirating for me, so I’m buying my music… on physical discs. We may have more than 700 albums, and as far as I like the artwork of those: I don’t use them. It’s been a while that I’m not using CD anymore: I bought them, rip them in mp3, and never used the physical element again. I would like to move completely to digital music, but I’m kind of stuck, and it’s where I need your help.
Firstly, I don’t want to lose all the music I bought thought the years: I still listen to them. On the other side, I would like to get rid of the physical disk, by keeping the music, of course. I need to find a way not to lose the investment I made in music, and go totally digital. It’s something I want to change about my life: reducing the physical possessions I have. In that situation, except being pretty on shelves, they serve no purposes. Here are my guidelines to find a solution for my problem:
- I want to still be the owner of all the music I bought over the last decade, but get rid of the physical discs;
- It needs to be legit;
- I need to be able to share it with my fiancé: we live in the same condo (I think it’s just fair use);
- I want to be the owner of my songs: if I stop to pay for a service, as an example, I still want to be able to listen to the songs I bought;
- I would prefer not to be stuck with one platform/service/tool, but if it’s the case, I can live with something that I’m pretty sure won’t disappears, like iTunes.
I know the physical disc part will be tough, maybe impossible, and that the solution will be to buy again, the digital version of those. Even if it’s the case, I’m still looking toward a solution that would fit my needs for future acquisitions. I started to look at different solutions like going only with the iTunes store (I already bought many unique songs when I didn’t feel like buying a full disc), spotify… I’m in Canada, so many services may not be available here. Is there anything that would make sense? Do you have any solution that would help me go from my actual discs collection to digital one? Do you have a preferred music provider for the digital music you buy? Are my criteria crazy, and I should stop to think about being the owner of media, and just enjoy unlimited music services (having access, as long as I pay)? Share your thoughts!
Update 2013-11-09
Thanks to the people who are helping me to solve my problem. One thing I wasn’t maybe not clear as I thought: I’m already putting my CD in mp3, and add them on a server so Émile, and I can access the song. I also have a copy on my computer for offline listening. This system is working well, but I would like to get rid of the physical disc, as we don’t use them at all once I ripped those in digital format. There is also one other criteria really important I forgot: possibility to listen to my music offline as I listen to my songs quite often with no Internet connection (flight, subway…).
