More Ways to Make Money Cleaning Your Home

We live in an age of downloadable content. Apple's iTunes has replaced the need to store and maintain large collections of CDs and albums. Devices exist to convert your LPs and cassettes to iTunes as well. Once you have downloaded all your media to iTunes, and made at least one iTunes library backup, do you really need all those pieces of vinyl and plastic? I have several cabinets of albums dating back to the seventies, cassettes from the eighties, and CDs from the nineties. Call me sentimental, the only format I have been able to toss were my 8-track cassettes. About three years ago I started downloading all my music. I haven't made the transition to downloading movies yet, because of speed and storage limitations, but the technology is improving every day, so it is only a matter of time.

So what am I doing holding on to all my vinyl and CDs? Apart from the obvious advantage regarding album cover artwork and lyrics, there is no need to keep hard copies anymore when your entire music collection can fit on a drive the size of a pack of playing cards. There are second hand vinyl and CD shops in every major city like Second Spin and Amoeba in Los Angeles. At Second Spin, gently used CDs go from $1 -$2, while a Michael Jackson CD can fetch up to $6. It all depends on what the store already has in stock, and what is in demand. If they already have ten Kenny G CDs they probably won't need another one, so don't hesitate to split your collection amongst several stores. Extremely rare items can be sold on EBay or other web-based sites. Having a yard sale is another way to dispose of CDs, albums and tapes. Even if you only sell them for fifty cents or a dollar, this can add up to a nice chunk of money for sizable collections.

Just remember to back up your music library. And then make a backup of the backup. I recently learned this lesson after my last computer crashed. Fortunately, I had most of the collection backed up onto an external hard drive. I ended up losing two recent music downloads, Viva la Vida by Coldplay (not one of their best) and Epiphany by Chrisette Michel (OMG. She is amazing.)

The Apple Store's policy is that it is the customer's responsibility to create a backup of anything purchased from their site. If you need to download it again, you pay again. I hope they will rethink this policy, as many software developers did to accommodate users with computer and hard drive crashes, and owners who migrated from older to newer technologies. I also hope that Apple creates a better way of transferring music back and forth between devices. My entire music collection may fit on my computer, but it won’t fit on my iPhone. It would be great of there were a better way to select which songs or artists or even formats are stored on what device because you know the devices are going to change again and again.

New software and services are springing up to assist you with storing your digital media. Online Storage Solutions is just one of the latest services making it easier to store and transfer your music. Soon, I expect to see large capacity wireless storage drives with the ability to stream music & video to every PC, flat screen and cell phone in the home. For those of you who have already made the transition from hard copy newspapers to reading multiple newspapers online, and for those who have already transferred all your CDs to iTunes, the transition to video storage devices won't be a difficult one. The hard part is letting go of all your stuff. If you are able to do so, you might be able to get some money for all that media stuff filling your home. At least enough to buy groceries for a week or two. In today’s world, that can be very helpful.

Upcoming: Go for the Gold

Check out Chrisette Michel's song I'm Leaving on You Tube.
Check out Online Storage Solutions for $19 a year. 
Enjoy!