Travel Technology - Backing up music CDs project?

I have done some searches but have not found anything related.

I have an acquaintance who wants to back up all of his CDs but can not do it himself as he says his computer is too slow, five years old. He has approximately 1,100 CDs and he is willing to pay me to do this for him.

I have the software (CDex) to do it and figure it would take me 3-5 minutes to actually rip a CD to mp3 and then 4-7 minutes to burn the mp3s onto each DVD.
(Any suggestions on other well regarded ripping software would be appreciated).

I know every one has their own personal price points, but what would you charge either for the project or per CD? I am just looking for some ballpark figures and would you price it per CD or for the overall project?

Let me know if you have any questions.

Take a look at this link to see what commercial services charge. Not sure how old this article is so you may want to verify the prices.
http://reviews.digitaltrends.com/guide/44/cd-ripping-services-compared
For your friend's sake I would assume you would want to charge less than any commercially available service otherwise there would be no benefit of you doing it.

I have the software (CDex) to do it and figure it would take me 3-5 minutes to actually rip a CD to mp3 and then 4-7 minutes to burn the mp3s onto each DVD.
(Any suggestions on other well regarded ripping software would be appreciated).


Don't forget to add more time for those CD's that can't be tagged (you'll be surprised how many of them are still unknown by CDDB).

Manually having to tag a CD sucks :D

This may sound of heresy, but I just backed up about 700 of my CDs using Windows Media Player to rip. I love CDEX but with WMP you can configure it to automatically start the rip when you insert the CD & eject the CD when done.

[Drive opens] [remove disc] [insert next disc] [hit close button] [repeat]

Just the lack of pressing enter, clicking a button, typing a title, etc. made it a pleasure. It will try and determine the CD & track titles off the internet and you can set it up to create a new subdir for each artist, disc, etc. You can also set the bit encoding rate to whatever you think best (I usually use 320).

Thanks for the input and suggestions.

I have been researching the commercial services and it seems what they really offer is speed in their turnaround times. 2 days for 200 CDs, 4 days for 500 CDs, etc. But they charge $180-$230 for those 200 CDs and double that for $400.

I am in the process of asking him how he wants to handle CDs that are not automatically tagged (fifty cent up charge? ;) ). Because I can see that as a huge time sink. I know it was with my own collection and I had about 600 CDs (although I backed all of mine up over the course of a year and a half).

I have used Windows Media Player to rip a CD... actually just to test it out, once. I assume you can only rip to .wma, not .mp3, as that would be the deciding factor on whether to use WMP. He has requested .mp3 specifically.
Although I could rip to .wma, then (batch) convert to .mp3, while less manual work it is still additional time as well as some people might feel additional loss of sound quality.

I have gone ahead and asked him what he is looking to pay / willing to pay, to make it easier.

As for charging him less... we are not too close of acquaintances. Just kidding! ;)

On Windows Media Player 11 click:

Rip > Format > mp3
Rip > Bit Rate > whatever you want
Rip > check Eject CD after ripping

i used itunes for over 1000 cds myself. wasn't too bad, but as one who has done it, i'd ship them off if i had to do it again. no matter how easy the software makes it, it gets really old really fast.

That is good to know about WMP, converting to mp3, thanks. That would probably save some time which could lower the time spent for me = lower price for him.

And if I was in a hurry to convert / back up everything I probably would have shipped mine off as well. But since I was not in a hurry I just took my time and boy did it take some time. But hey, I guess I saved myself around $600. :D

Thanks for everyone's input.