Music Library To Go

First, a prediction: some day we'll buy the nearly complete music library and the player will be free. Imagine getting a player pre-loaded with most songs in your favorite genre already installed, with room left over to add more and a subscription service for instant updates. Imagine even being able to buy the high-resolution library.

But for the next couple of years, the majority of consumers, and even audiophiles who rip their music at he-man lossless bit-rates, will find that as the storage capacity on a music player increases, the problem will be finding enough free time to fill it up. Who can spare the days and weeks required to transfer their entire collection, or can even find enough time to buy all of those tunes, one at a time?

A new service from Cambridge SoundWorks was announced recently that claims to address this problem. The company says that customers can now walk into any of its retail locations, drop off their audio CDs, and have them digitized and loaded onto an MP3 player.

CS reports that the new program, which the company is describing as "the first of its kind," is part of a partnership with Ready To Play, a company specializing in the conversion of audio CDs to digital format and loading MP3 players. The service will be available at CS's retail locations in New England and the San Francisco Bay area, and nationally via www.cambridgesoundworks.com.

Worth noting is that Cambridge SoundWorks, which manufacturers and retails home theater, home audio and multimedia products, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Creative Technology, makers of the Zen Touch portable audio player.

How is it done? CS says customers can bring their CD collection to any of their retail locations and the CDs will be shipped to Ready To Play, which has a "team of specialists who professionally and quickly convert music collections to digital formats." CS adds that customers can choose to have their digitized music loaded directly onto an MP3 player or onto a DVD.

The price of the service is $1.10 per CD. CS says it will have demonstration systems available in each store and will also offer several bundling programs with Creative MP3 players and Cambridge SoundWorks' high-performance speakers.

Ready To Play's Jeff Tedesco notes, "What could be more fun than taking your new MP3 player home and having your whole library of music available and organized the minute you take it out of the box?"

X