Buying some previously stolen goods...

Early last month I decided that it was best to re-import our entire CD collection into iTunes. I did this because we had some mp3s encoded at 128kbs, some at 160kbs, as well as some unprotected AAC at 128kbs. To standardize everything, upgrade the older lower bitrate stuff, and make everything compatible with my mp3CD player in the car, it all had to go.

The biggest issue with this was that though we no longer pirate music from anyone, we had a sizable collection of friend's files and even stuff I downloaded seven years ago in the Napster heyday. We came to the conclusion that even retaining these files was pretty immoral.

I deleted everything (save some non-stolen files and protected iTunes store AACs) and started from scratch.

Yesterday, I took a bunch of old CDs that we no longer wanted to Newbury Comics to cash them in. They took a few of them and gave me $39. I put every last bit of it toward repurchasing some of the music that we had been missing:

Jack Johnson - Brushfire Fairytales


Barenaked Ladies - Maroon


Ben Folds Five - The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner


Beck - Midnight Vultures

I still very much miss:

The Shins - Oh, Inverted World


Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot


The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots


Death Cab for Cutie - Something about Airplanes


and all five Dismemberment Plan discs

It feels really good to listen to this stuff knowing that the artist was finally compensated (not that I don't have serious issues with the state of the industry and the extremely questionable practices of the RIAA).