I’ve fallen a bit behind in my quest to rip all of my music CDs into digital files. If I had more money than time, I might consider using one of the CD ripping services. But since both are tight at the moment, I’ve resorted to a multi-tasking approach. It might not be the most innovative way to rip those CDs, but it seems to be a cost- and time-effective method …

Multi-tasking in this case means multi-computers. I’ve been doing the bulk of my paying work on the PC, while I handle the CD ripping (and listening) chores on the iMac. This approach leaves the PC processor free to do what it needs to do, while the Mac happily rips those music files. As a bonus, I get to listen to a constantly changing flow of music.

While quality control is a big issue, just finding the blasted CDs has proven to be a much larger hurdle. For every CD that’s in the correct case, there are two that are either in the wrong case, or worse, missing altogether. Ah, the downside of having a kid that likes the same music that you do …

I’ve been working genre-by-genre, artist-by-artist, as I locate and clean the discs. I got all of my surf music ripped weeks ago. Today is Neil Young day. I listen to the complete albums to check for damaged songs. But I’m not sure about what to do with skipping tracks.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the record companies gave a discount when buying individual songs to replace damaged CDs? I’d bet that some enterprising entrepreneur could find a business model in that …

Related: CD Ripping Services