Since our music library is now "digitized" and we listen mostly on our ipods (and very rarely play CDs on our CD player), my husband and I have discussed getting rid of our hundreds of CD jewel cases, thus freeing up shelf space.
We'd like to retain the CDS & liner notes, since we can't QUITE yet bring ourselves to purge the CDs entirely.
The husband has forced my hand by starting on this project today while I was at work (without my permission or oversight!), and he bought these ugly black leatherette cubes with white topstitching that are like little CD file cabinets, with vinyl CD "hanging folders". (He had no plan as to where these 8 dumb cubes will live, he just ran amuck at Best Buy. Nevermind, they'll be returned!)
Before I put on my thinking cap to try to come up with a sane, attractive means of storing the CDs in our small apartment, I thought I'd pose the problem here and ask for suggestions from any who have tackled this storage problem.
I'm leaning toward good looking discreet "albums" that can be stored on a shelf, organized alphabetically. Any suggestions or recommendations welcome--
Storage albums
I like storage albums with padded sleeves for CDs and DVDs. You can keep the liner notes behind the CDs. Otherwise, you could always rip the CDs and store them on a cloud server like Amazon's. (See link.) It would be time consuming, but maybe worth it to gain the space and the portability of cloud music storage.
http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=2658409011
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OPTION #4:
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If you're going to pay 40+ cents per CD, you should be getting something a lot better than what those binder sheets offer. At a minimum, you should get what your jewel cases are already giving you now:
1. Safe, archival storage.
2. Storage of your CD, its liner notes, its tray-card (and obi strip if you're into that), plus a second CD if it's a double album, all in one place.
3. Cover artwork and tray card both visible. Spine portion of the tray card readable without pulling the whole thing off the shelf.
4. Choice of storing on a shelf and reading spines, or storing in trays/boxes/drawers and reading covers.
5. Easy rearrangement, addition, and removal.
And then you should also get:
6. Dense storage, denser than slim cases.
And it turns out that there's a product that gives you all that. It's the "CD Pro" sleeve from MM Design. It isn't designed to go into a binder; it sits loose on a shelf or in a tray or a case, like an extra-thin slim case, but with room for two CDs and with the tray-card visible on the back (the spine portion isn't on the spine of the sleeve, but it's right next to it, so it's easy to read -- as demonstrated in the blurry third photo). MM Designs also sells trays, cases, travel pouches, alphabetical dividers, labels, etc.
I haven't put my collection in these sleeves yet because metal racks are cheaper and I still have room... But when I finally do run out of room, my CDs are all going into these sleeves. That is, unless I can lose my irrational attachment to them and do the RIGHT thing, described below.
50 cents per CD (but I've got a friend with a thousand or so extra sleeves that he'd probably sell for less).
OPTION #5:
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Do what I can't bring myself to do: Now that all your music is stored in some lossless format on a hard drive somewhere, sell your CDs.
Keep the ones that are REALLY important to you or that impress your music-snob frenemies, but get rid of the 80-90% that you never listen to, that you bought only for one song, or that just have cover artwork with no liner notes. If you ever change your mind about a CD that you've sold, you can always buy it again; used CDs are cheap, and with your profits from the sale plus all the money you DIDN'T spend on sleeves or binders, you'll still end up way ahead and have plenty of shelf space to boot.
http://www.mmdesign.com/products/cd-pro-poly-sleeve.php
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OPTION #2:
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Replace your full-size jewel cases with half-thickness slim cases. They'll protect your CDs way better than the binder sheets, but they're not as compact; I'd guess that they require 1.5 times the volume. And if you can't pack rows of cases right next to each other, like in a drawer or case, but rather have to line them up in single file on a shelf, they'll take 3 times as much linear shelf space as the binders.
And they still don't solve the tray-card problem. Which is a big deal with slim cases, because it means that the spines of those cases will all be blank. Which means that you CAN'T line them up like books on a shelf; you'll have to put them in a drawer or case where you can see their faces as you flip through them. Like in a record store, if you're old enough to remember what those were.
Or, if you're really just storing the CDs and not planning to play them, just put the slim cases in a box; you can fit about 300 of them in a cubic foot.
15 cents per CD.
OPTION #3:
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Buy non-standard CD binders with sheets to match. The sheets are often sturdier and roomier (although I still haven't seen any with room for a tray card), but they don't fit standard binders, so if the company doesn't make a binder in the color you want, or stops making sheets to fit your binder, or goes out of business or whatever, you're stuck.
And they're EXPENSIVE: over 40 cents per CD for the nothing-fancy ones I looked at (photo below). I only pay 30 cents per CD every time I buy another 660-disc rack from Boltz; a dozen-or-so cardboard binders and 150 plastic pages shouldn't cost the same as 30 pounds of steel that stands almost as tall as I do, right?
42 cents per CD.
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http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000YM06FI/
Every couple of months, I consider doing this...
...but then I decide against it for various reasons.
So I've done plenty of thinking about the problem and have a lot to say about it. Lucky you.
OPTION #1:
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There are eight-pocket binder sheets (4 pockets on each side of the sheet), like Case Logic's ProSleeves, that fit in standard binders... But just barely, and they do it by putting the punched holes in the corners of the inner pockets, so a round CD will fit in any pocket but square liner notes will only fit in the outer pockets. This means that a CD and its liner notes can't share a pocket; instead, you have to put the CD in an inner pocket and its liner notes in the adjacent outer pocket. So each 8-pocket sheet holds only 4 CDs.
That isn't a huge problem; the sheets are cheap, so you can afford 200 of them as easily as 100. What IS a huge problem is the card under the jewel-case tray. CDs have a diameter of 120mm, and liner notes are 120mm square... But the tray card is 150mm long, and it won't fit in any of those 8 binder-sleeve pockets unless it's folded. I'm pretty sure you don't want to fold the card (especially if you're planning to eventually sell your CDs), and I know you don't want to just discard it, so if you use those binder sleeves for CDs and liner notes, you'll have to find some other place to store your tray cards. Which means that you'll probably never look at them again until you're ready to assemble them into new jewel cases and put them up for sale.
If that's still ok with you, there are more problems:
1) Those binder sheets are inexpensive because they're made of cheap plastic that may eventually lift the ink off your CDs and yellow your liner notes, and the CD's fragile label side presses against plastic rather than fabric, so it's susceptible to scratching -- this isn't "archival storage" by any stretch.
2) The sheets almost don't fit in a standard binder; they're wider than standard US Letter-size paper and may stick out beyond some binders' front and back covers.
3) To make the sheets as narrow as possible, the pockets are designed to be exactly 120mm wide, and they open to the side rather than the top. Production variation can make the pockets slightly too narrow, so CDs sometimes stick out a little. Also, of course, the side opening means that you have to be a little bit careful to keep the CDs and liner notes in the pockets.
4) The sheets are made from plastic that's pretty flimsy, so you can't put a lot of them in a big binder.
5) You'll want both CDs of a double album to be on the same side of one sheet, so you'll have to leave two pockets on the previous side empty about half the time (which is wasteful and looks sloppy), and you'll nearly always have to leave CD2's liner-note pocket empty (which just looks sloppy). Not a big deal unless you have a ton of double albums and/or you're compulsive.
12 cents per CD.
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http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000KMR2YK/
help yourself and others
william-holden-caulfield,
How about donating all your CD's to a worthy organization that helps less fortunate children (very ill) and take the tax write off. You could store all your music on a Bang Olufsen BeoSound 5 (this saves the music, cover art, and playlist) and not have to depend on an off site "cloud server". This method helps you and also helps others.
Oh, one more thing.
Jewel cases are 142mm x 125mm. The MMDesign CD Pro sleeves are 160mm x 132mm (larger by only 3/4" x 1/4"), so if you've already invested in special CD-sized shelves or boxes, the sleeves will almost certainly fit. Binders, of course, won't.
And Robert1960... If you think this is bad, you should see me buy luggage.
I'm thrilled that Fastfwd has given this so much thought,
and shared all his "research"-- saves me a lot of time & effort. Thanks, Fastfwd.
I'm leaning toward those "Bellagio" binders too, I'd bookmarked them already before your post. They're nothing to write home about, but the CD/ DVD binder pickins are pretty slim.
The Prosleeves are an appealing option, too-- will see if I can find something to store them in that I can live with.
I'm not quite comfortable with the idea of ditching the CDs entirely and "storing" digitally. I'm probably being irrational and superstitious, but I'm afraid I'll somehow lose it all someday in some sort of horrific "malfunction".
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I have three of these...(one for photo files)
Not the best but in a fit of attempted organization when we moved
a few years ago it seemed like a decent idea.
All our music is on various tiny apple things.
I do like having the originals. In all the tech brilliance, many files are
lost in computer crashes...photos lost. Back-up systems are not
reliable. Dream on if you think otherwise.
Built a rolling cart for work called 'boom-boy' that has an 80's boom-box
with drawers of cassettes and a cube 8track player. Big hit with the younger
music geeks. I had intended to toss it all...
Everything is backed up twice now, and i hold onto originals.
Nice research! Jewel cases were always a bit odd.
Losing it all
Of course it makes sense to have a backup copy, but if that's the only reason you're keeping the CDs, you can do better.
You can losslessly fit the contents of 100-200 CDs on one dual-layer Blu-ray disc and it'll only cost you 1 or 2 cents per CD, or you can make the backup on another hard drive for about 2-4 cents per CD. Either way, it'll take up hardly any space and be as safe from most hazards as CDs in binders. And if you store the backup at a friend's house or in a safe-deposit box, it'll be even safer from fire or natural disaster than your CDs are.
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