Having CD's that go back to their launch (plus records/cassettes from before), I had to rip a couple of thousand CDs to FLAC so I'm totally with you on this one

Having CD's that go back to their launch (plus records/cassettes from before), I had to rip a couple of thousand CDs to FLAC so I'm totally with you on this one. Unfortunately a lot of people don't understand what's thrown away when converting to a lossy format, and the consequential horrible degradation that comes with converting from one lossy format to another. It's not like storage or bandwidth is an issue now (soon even the 2:1 or 3:1 lossless with FLAC won't be worth it). Just save the raw data and move on. Of course it's more 'convenient' to trust cloud service X but (as recently discussed here) 'convenient' services can turn out to be pretty venal - not to mention short-lived (Microsoft Zune,various google services, random shuttered startups etc).