Say goodbye to CDs?

For the last couple of weeks, I have been considering tossing my music CD collection. Every time, I am on the verge of dumping them into the trash, nostalgia and sentimentality holds me back. I start thinking, what if my digital collection dies and I need to restore from these hard-copies? What if I want to look at those booklets again? What if I still need these for reasons yet unforeseen? So with these questions in mind, I have kept the collection... thus far.

I am now seriously considering tossing them. Some of these CDs come with very fond memories, reaching as far back as my college years. I still listen to some of those songs, but not from my CDs. In fact, I have not touched my CDs in years. With the advent of iTunes, music-listening devices and my external backup drive, I have had little reason to "failover" to my CDs. Considering the fact that my CDs have been wasting away, with no immediate forecasts of using them anytime soon in the foreseeable future, why should I keep them? They're only taking up space.

The only advantage I can think of for having these is if I wanted to lend these out to a friend. With all the DRM and copyright restrictions on everything digital, borrowing things have become nigh impossible without incurring some rich media organization's litigious wrath. However, most of my friends and I don't listen to the same music. So the chances of lending out stuff is slim. In my mind, it's probably easier to just get rid of them. Most of the collection is so old, I'm not sure if they've degraded to the point where it's not readable anymore.

Anyways, this weekend, I will be going through my collection to see if there is any that I actually want to keep. The rest will either be pushed onto friends or thrown away. Maybe I should offer the entire collection up on FreeCycle. Either way, the space those things are taking up will be freed.

Other projects on the horizon include downloading user manuals and tossing any paper copies, and transferring recipes in books into my recipe application.