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On this note, I met an entrepreneur in Maryland making hundreds of millions by buying (or getting for free) used music cassette tapes and scratched cds, and cle
by davemel37 11y ago
On this note, I met an entrepreneur in Maryland making hundreds of millions by buying (or getting for free) used music cassette tapes and scratched cds, and cleaning them up, repackaging them and selling them at gas stations throughout the US.
There is still gold in them circle things and them thar hills.
- NegativeLatency 11y agoScratched cassette tapes?
- davemel37 11y agoscratched cds. They buff out the scratches, repackage it and sell it for a few bucks at truck stops and gas stations through America.
- copperx 11y agoI understand how some people might buy CDs, but I can't believe there is a multimillion market out there for them. Maybe he made his millions one or two decades ago?
- onion2k 11y agoNew cars only started getting streaming or aux audio input capabilities in the past 5 years. Most people still own CDs to play when they're driving because they have no other option.
- ewzimm 11y agoAn FM transmitter that attaches to a smartphone gives a perfectly clear signal, costs less than $7, and only requires a cigarette lighter, standard in cars since the 1920's, and FM radio, standard since the 50's.
- cableshaft 11y agoI have an FM transmitter, and I still keep a CD in the player in the car and use that more often. It takes time to get everything hooked up. On drives greater than 30 mins, it's worth it, but if I'm just going someplace ten minutes away (i.e. most of my driving), well I'd be adding an extra 2-3 minutes just hunting down the cord, plugging it in, launching the player, choosing what I want to play, etc. Meanwhile my CD player starts the instant I turn on the car. That being said, I did get a Bluetooth FM transmitter recently that has a built-in SD card slot and starts transmitting the SD card music the instant you plug it into the cigarette lighter, so that may eliminate my need for CDs.
- davemel37 11y agoI wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it. (we were running a p2p used video game marketplace, and went to him to help cover inventory gaps.) The next time you are driving through any random state and stop at a gas station or truck stop, you will see cassette tapes for sale. Those are from this guy. You also have to consider he operates on massive margins. He gets his good for next to nothing and sells it for several dollars.
- copperx 11y agoThat's very cool. I'm sure he operates with margins that most companies only dream about.
- morgante 11y agoI think you might be out of touch with reality. Consumer technologies die slowly. CDs are in decline, but they're still a huge market (many, many millions). Consider just the millions of used cars out there which only take CDs and you can see why the market is still probably a huge business. 46% of music industry revenue still came from CDs in 2014. [0] That's at least hundreds of millions of dollars. [0] http://www.ifpi.org/facts-and-stats.php http://www.ifpi.org/facts-and-stats.php
- iagooar 11y agoYou cannot do millions doing that kind of job all by yourself. So I guess that you need a whole company for it, which implies managing people, money, paying salaries, taxes, etc. It's not only "cleaning scratched cds".