Next in my stage of anal organization are my CD’s. I am SOO tired of having to store these huge cases when all I use are the 60+ gigs of MP3’s I have ripped from them. I technically can’t throw them away unless I destroy them (since I ripped them) but then if the RIAA ever knocked on my door I couldn’t prove I ever bought the music. So that means I must store them. And the truth is, music codecs change all the time. I have no doubt that even my 160 kbps MP3’s will go the way of the LP in ten years. And when that happens, I want the original disc that I can convert to the new, new thing.

I am way past the college days of having a 300 CD rack up a wall, and now they are filling up the bottom of closets and under the bed. Now that is even annoying me. So what I think I have decided on is to buy a bunch of plastic sleeves from Sleeve City, and file them in some kind of Storage Box. That way I can still access them by putting index cards and group them by A, B, C, etc., and also keep the CD booklet. Without the booklet, it is near impossible to find CD’s that have but an image on it.

This also solves my current problem of buying only digital music. Buying from iTunes is cool, but I still feel ripped off. I mean, $10 for a digital file with limited use, in a codec that WILL change one day, OR $13 at Best Buy for the CD and booklet in a format I can rip to whatever I want and use however I want? The only reason I only buy on iTunes right now is that I have no more space for the CD’s. With this idea, I will buy an additional storage box to throw new music into. When that fills up or when I am not listening to those anymore, I can file them.

My buddy Alan wants to nuke his CD’s also, but because he doesn’t think he will ever reference them again, he is thinking to just nuke everything but the CD’s and just put it on a CD spindle. This would work for him, but I just couldn’t bear the one time I need to look for a CD, and I have to look through the spindle and hope the band name is on it.

So I have ordered some sample sleeves and I will make a decision shortly. I can’t imagine that this problem wouldn’t get more and more prevalent once digital music gets more ingrained in the non-techy.