9 ms·

A small Wisconsin company stored thousands of people’s CDs, then vanished

96 points by thekevan 7y ago

java-man 7y ago
I would have assigned a high probability to this outcome from the beginning. Why would anyone want to send their CDs (or any other valuables) to a third party without express guarantees for getting it back?
- Finnucane 7y ago
  Really, I can't imagine using a service like that unless it was in a place I could get physical access to.
  - alehul 7y ago
    I've had this same thought about cloud storage. I had an older family member ask me "are you sure it won't go anywhere?" while I was encouraging them to use cloud storage such as Dropbox or Google Drive rather than a flash drive. While I had naively never given it that much thought before, I wasn't sure the answer was "yes"— specifically that, if Dropbox or Google Drive were to shut down, they would give users the opportunity to take their files out. I tried searching through their ToS but couldn't find any guarantees.
    - java-man 7y ago
      The difference between physical goods and service is the cloud has a copy. One does not lose own copy of the data when service goes bust, and one can use multiple cloud providers for redundancy. But in this case, I think ToS are insufficient, unless backed by physics - specific guarantees and allocated (escrow) funds, or insurance, for example, to purchase the replacement.
      - ghaff 7y ago
        I agree with that but I suspect there are a lot of people who have their only copy of a lot of things in one cloud service or another. Even I probably don't have a copy of everything that's up on, for example, Google. On the other hand, I do try to remember to do a data download periodically and I doubt anything I'd lose would be too critical. And sometimes you need to put a level of trust in a service. I've sent things off to be scanned because, realistically, it was never going to happen otherwise and I really wanted to get the materials into digital form.
        exhilaration 7y ago
        I suspect there are a lot of people who have their only copy of a lot of things in one cloud service or another. Very true, think of all the people using cloud-first tools like Google Docs or Google Sheets - how many bother to download/backup those files?
        ghaff 7y ago
        Probably very few. Admittedly I don't worry too much about Google or Microsoft falling over although there's probably always a possibility that you lose access to your account because of some edge case.
        Rerarom 7y ago
        Yeah, but Dropbox is okay since you have a copy of the folder on your computer(s). Also, it's guaranteed to be small (2 GB) so it's easy to backup.
- mark-r 7y ago
  The article was quite clear on this in multiple places, there were guarantees that you still owned the media and that it would be returned. The problem is, who guarantees the guarantors?
  - java-man 7y ago
    Exactly my point. With deposits, you have FDIC insurance. With this, you have nothing.
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      This is a great reason to have discs backed up in digital form (in multiple orgs, not locations). Insurance covers the value lost, but not the content. Archive/Backup All The Things. Physical media archived away someone with no other copies? Not even once.
      - dddddaviddddd 7y ago
        That's how music master tapes are stored. Irreplaceable originals often stored by contractors. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/magazine/universal-fire-master-recordings.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/magazine/universal-fire-m...
        mark-r 7y ago
        In some cases, they've decided the digital backups are good enough and destroyed the irreplaceable originals. On purpose, not by accident.
  - nkrisc 7y ago
    Promises are cheap. Be able to sue or absorb the loss (financial and sentimental).
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
vr46 7y ago
A shame. I bought a CD from them, which they kept in storage, and I was instantly able to stream it. (I couldn’t get that music any other way at the time.) I have hundreds and hundreds of albums, maybe more than a thousand, but I still couldn’t see myself sending them to someone to rip and store.
AdmiralAsshat 7y ago
They really seem to be banking on the idea that no one will be able to stop them from chucking all of the CD's by the end of December, and then telling them "There's nothing we can do now" if they're hauled to court in 2020.
maxton 7y ago
I only first heard about this company earlier this year, and was pretty excited because they were the only way to buy DRM-free lossless, CD-quality music at a reasonable price (without having to ship and rip an actual CD). But I was concerned that their business model was unsustainable - keeping an inventory of millions of physical discs is a big ask. It's surprising to me that there is still no iTunes-like service that just sells CD-quality audio. Sure there is HDTracks, but their price is way too high to be reasonable (usually double the iTunes price, or more) and their selection is pretty limited. Even Amazon's music store, with it's "Auto-Rip" feature when you buy a real CD, only gives you 256k MP3s. So for now, the most reasonable way for me to download FLACs is to torrent.
- ghostly_s 7y ago
  > It's surprising to me that there is still no iTunes-like service that just sells CD-quality audio. Isn't that Tidal's thing?
  - ilikehurdles 7y ago
    Tidal rents out the audio, they don't sell it. All of Apple Music, Tidal, Google Music or whatever it's called now, and Spotify are lacking when it comes to simply having every song in my library. There are always tracks getting grayed out from each service's rental libary due to shifting agreements and margins. That all said, Tidal sounds amazing and its videos are extremely high quality as well. I had serious issues with its desktop client last time I tried which caused me to switch back to spotify. The library is much smaller as well but that didn't matter as much because of the clear tradeoff in quality.
  - smacktoward 7y ago
    You're thinking of Pono: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pono_(digital_music_service) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pono_(digital_music_service) ... which unfortunately went out of business in 2017.
- lanius 7y ago
  Amazon Music HD
crtlaltdel 7y ago
i am curious what percentage of the materials could be considered rare. it seems like most people with rare material wouldn’t send it to a service like this. another thought...how many of those CDs came from columbia house ;)
- jerrysievert 7y ago
  while I had some idea of what some of my rare cd's were when I started to liquidate my own collection, I was quite surprised by how many I didn't expect to be rare actually were. so, I'm not sure how many people who were willing to send off their cd's themselves would do the due diligence to find out the rareness of their own collection.
  - crtlaltdel 7y ago
    yeah good point, and im not sure how easy it is to appraise a CD collection to begin with
BooneJS 7y ago
Google Maps shows an old address for Murfie Music where a new 8 story tower was built recently (I work in the new tower next to it). Anyone know where their last known location was?
- donarb 7y ago
  This article from Madison.com says they moved to Middleton in 2016. https://madison.com/business/when-the-music-stops-madison-based-murfie-unexpectedly-ceases-operations/article_71cba39e-46b2-5657-8e5c-04cae259d8cc.html https://madison.com/business/when-the-music-stops-madison-ba...
  - donarb 7y ago
    This Better Business Bureau posting states the address as 8001 Terrace Ave Ste 203, MIddleton, WI https://www.bbb.org/us/wi/middleton/profile/online-shopping/murfiecom-0694-1000011773 https://www.bbb.org/us/wi/middleton/profile/online-shopping/...
MrGilbert 7y ago
It's really a shame. I used murfie to get albums that were never released as digital albums. Especially old game or movie soundtracks, the ones you wouldn't find on your go-to platform, because they are too much of a niche. There were a lot of gems. For me, I only wanted to have the FLAC anyway, so I'm not sorry about the physical discs... But of course, I'm sorry for everyone who has their collection there.
whodidntante 7y ago
Murfie customer here. 125 CD's Not surprised this happened, not particularly upset. Years ago I moved to Sonos, did not have a CD player anymore, and did not want to go through the trouble of ripping and storing (where?) my collection. So this was great. When I started using Apple Music, they had everything anyway for $10/month, and never bothered to use Murfie. If I ever thought I had something valuable, I would never have shipped them to some startup.
- Shivetya 7y ago
  I have always wondered, I have ripped hundreds of CDs which sit in boxes which i never expect to access again; i do not even own a cd player. do I need to keep them indefinitely? what if they were lost, would I be obligated to delete the rips?
  - curtis3389 7y ago
    IANAL, but here's a section from the relevant law: https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#117 https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#117 Based on that, I don't think you would need to delete them.
  - rwallace 7y ago
    As I understand it (usual disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer; if you want to be sure, ask someone who is): - If you sell or give the CDs to someone else, you are legally obliged to delete the rips. - But if you toss them in a landfill, you are free and clear.
- paulie_a 7y ago
  I don't own a CD player. But for a few local bands and more major ones I bought them because while I can get them on Spotify. I wanted a permanent copy so ripped them to 320k and flac. Just in case. Those three or so were special to me.
mysterydip 7y ago
"Every CD and vinyl record you store at Murfie HQ is your property. We take that very seriously. In the event Murfie goes out of business, you will get back every CD and vinyl record you own in your current collection." A buyer beware for future sites that promise something similar to the above, it's not worth the webpage it's printed on. Regardless of initial sincerity, this could change at a moment's notice.
- irongeek 7y ago
  Yes, when there is no money left, that sincere person who wrote that statement will not be able to afford to send everything back. Faith in silos is a bad idea.
  - paulryanrogers 7y ago
    Which makes the faith in Apple's recent pivot to privacy suspect. While it's financially viable it will continue. The moment it costs more than the alternative ... it's unlikely to endure. One might say their compromising in China is a sign they've already begun to change.
- john_moscow 7y ago
  I would say, seeing a company advertise something like this without an actual verifiable escrow mechanism is a huge red flag. Because it means they are targeting people who don't understand how limited liability works and are very likely not planning to hold up their promise.
- userbinator 7y ago
  A buyer beware for future sites that promise something similar to the above, it's not worth the webpage it's printed on. Regardless of initial sincerity, this could change at a moment's notice. We should call this Murfie's Law.
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  The promises about shipping can change. The ownership of the discs can't. If someone starts throwing CDs in the garbage they are going to get sued hard.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
userbinator 7y ago
“Abandoned discs will be recycled by the end of December,” read an email, “when the storage facility must be vacated.” Sounds like a job for the Jason Scott... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10064565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10064565 ...not to actually archive them, but to help the original owners get their property back.
donatj 7y ago
As the owner of a giant CD collection I'm honestly kind of bummed I didn't hear about this service sooner. About 6 months ago I spent a solid week gathering and ripping a ton of my older CDs to lossless. I still have a ton of albums that are just VBR mp3 I didn't care enough to re-rip.
- rahuldottech 7y ago
  > I'm honestly kind of bummed Even after learning that you would have lost your entire collection?
  - donatj 7y ago
    I'd have them all ripped, right? Honestly I'd happily trade them all for lossless copies and my basement back.
danschumann 7y ago
I interviewed and got offered to work here. I saw the inside. They had like 1 guy working on ruby and he was leaving. Probably 5 or 10 college students sorting through big pallets of cds. This was like 2016.
quotha 7y ago
There are companies that will store your gold and silver too O.O
ken 7y ago
It sucks but it also seems no worse than 100 other startups that close up shop every month, or big company cloud services that get disscontinued. The user data in this case just happened to be stored on little plastic discs rather than AWS. At least it sounds like everyone had a local copy of their bits.
lgats 7y ago
Not your keys not your CDs.

96 points by thekevan 7y ago

I would have assigned a high probability to this outcome from the beginning. Why would anyone want to send their CDs (or any other valuables) to a third party without express guarantees for getting it back?

Finnucane 7y ago
Really, I can't imagine using a service like that unless it was in a place I could get physical access to.
- alehul 7y ago
  I've had this same thought about cloud storage. I had an older family member ask me "are you sure it won't go anywhere?" while I was encouraging them to use cloud storage such as Dropbox or Google Drive rather than a flash drive. While I had naively never given it that much thought before, I wasn't sure the answer was "yes"— specifically that, if Dropbox or Google Drive were to shut down, they would give users the opportunity to take their files out. I tried searching through their ToS but couldn't find any guarantees.
  - java-man 7y ago
    The difference between physical goods and service is the cloud has a copy. One does not lose own copy of the data when service goes bust, and one can use multiple cloud providers for redundancy. But in this case, I think ToS are insufficient, unless backed by physics - specific guarantees and allocated (escrow) funds, or insurance, for example, to purchase the replacement.
    - ghaff 7y ago
      I agree with that but I suspect there are a lot of people who have their only copy of a lot of things in one cloud service or another. Even I probably don't have a copy of everything that's up on, for example, Google. On the other hand, I do try to remember to do a data download periodically and I doubt anything I'd lose would be too critical. And sometimes you need to put a level of trust in a service. I've sent things off to be scanned because, realistically, it was never going to happen otherwise and I really wanted to get the materials into digital form.
      - exhilaration 7y ago
        I suspect there are a lot of people who have their only copy of a lot of things in one cloud service or another. Very true, think of all the people using cloud-first tools like Google Docs or Google Sheets - how many bother to download/backup those files?
        ghaff 7y ago
        Probably very few. Admittedly I don't worry too much about Google or Microsoft falling over although there's probably always a possibility that you lose access to your account because of some edge case.
      - Rerarom 7y ago
        Yeah, but Dropbox is okay since you have a copy of the folder on your computer(s). Also, it's guaranteed to be small (2 GB) so it's easy to backup.
mark-r 7y ago
The article was quite clear on this in multiple places, there were guarantees that you still owned the media and that it would be returned. The problem is, who guarantees the guarantors?
- java-man 7y ago
  Exactly my point. With deposits, you have FDIC insurance. With this, you have nothing.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    This is a great reason to have discs backed up in digital form (in multiple orgs, not locations). Insurance covers the value lost, but not the content. Archive/Backup All The Things. Physical media archived away someone with no other copies? Not even once.
    - dddddaviddddd 7y ago
      That's how music master tapes are stored. Irreplaceable originals often stored by contractors. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/magazine/universal-fire-master-recordings.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/magazine/universal-fire-m...
      - mark-r 7y ago
        In some cases, they've decided the digital backups are good enough and destroyed the irreplaceable originals. On purpose, not by accident.
- nkrisc 7y ago
  Promises are cheap. Be able to sue or absorb the loss (financial and sentimental).
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

vr46 7y ago

A shame. I bought a CD from them, which they kept in storage, and I was instantly able to stream it. (I couldn’t get that music any other way at the time.) I have hundreds and hundreds of albums, maybe more than a thousand, but I still couldn’t see myself sending them to someone to rip and store.

AdmiralAsshat 7y ago

They really seem to be banking on the idea that no one will be able to stop them from chucking all of the CD's by the end of December, and then telling them "There's nothing we can do now" if they're hauled to court in 2020.

maxton 7y ago

I only first heard about this company earlier this year, and was pretty excited because they were the only way to buy DRM-free lossless, CD-quality music at a reasonable price (without having to ship and rip an actual CD). But I was concerned that their business model was unsustainable - keeping an inventory of millions of physical discs is a big ask. It's surprising to me that there is still no iTunes-like service that just sells CD-quality audio. Sure there is HDTracks, but their price is way too high to be reasonable (usually double the iTunes price, or more) and their selection is pretty limited. Even Amazon's music store, with it's "Auto-Rip" feature when you buy a real CD, only gives you 256k MP3s. So for now, the most reasonable way for me to download FLACs is to torrent.

ghostly_s 7y ago
> It's surprising to me that there is still no iTunes-like service that just sells CD-quality audio. Isn't that Tidal's thing?
- ilikehurdles 7y ago
  Tidal rents out the audio, they don't sell it. All of Apple Music, Tidal, Google Music or whatever it's called now, and Spotify are lacking when it comes to simply having every song in my library. There are always tracks getting grayed out from each service's rental libary due to shifting agreements and margins. That all said, Tidal sounds amazing and its videos are extremely high quality as well. I had serious issues with its desktop client last time I tried which caused me to switch back to spotify. The library is much smaller as well but that didn't matter as much because of the clear tradeoff in quality.
- smacktoward 7y ago
  You're thinking of Pono: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pono_(digital_music_service) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pono_(digital_music_service) ... which unfortunately went out of business in 2017.
lanius 7y ago
Amazon Music HD

crtlaltdel 7y ago

i am curious what percentage of the materials could be considered rare. it seems like most people with rare material wouldn’t send it to a service like this. another thought...how many of those CDs came from columbia house ;)

jerrysievert 7y ago
while I had some idea of what some of my rare cd's were when I started to liquidate my own collection, I was quite surprised by how many I didn't expect to be rare actually were. so, I'm not sure how many people who were willing to send off their cd's themselves would do the due diligence to find out the rareness of their own collection.
- crtlaltdel 7y ago
  yeah good point, and im not sure how easy it is to appraise a CD collection to begin with

BooneJS 7y ago

Google Maps shows an old address for Murfie Music where a new 8 story tower was built recently (I work in the new tower next to it). Anyone know where their last known location was?

donarb 7y ago
This article from Madison.com says they moved to Middleton in 2016. https://madison.com/business/when-the-music-stops-madison-based-murfie-unexpectedly-ceases-operations/article_71cba39e-46b2-5657-8e5c-04cae259d8cc.html https://madison.com/business/when-the-music-stops-madison-ba...
- donarb 7y ago
  This Better Business Bureau posting states the address as 8001 Terrace Ave Ste 203, MIddleton, WI https://www.bbb.org/us/wi/middleton/profile/online-shopping/murfiecom-0694-1000011773 https://www.bbb.org/us/wi/middleton/profile/online-shopping/...

MrGilbert 7y ago

It's really a shame. I used murfie to get albums that were never released as digital albums. Especially old game or movie soundtracks, the ones you wouldn't find on your go-to platform, because they are too much of a niche. There were a lot of gems. For me, I only wanted to have the FLAC anyway, so I'm not sorry about the physical discs... But of course, I'm sorry for everyone who has their collection there.

whodidntante 7y ago

Murfie customer here. 125 CD's Not surprised this happened, not particularly upset. Years ago I moved to Sonos, did not have a CD player anymore, and did not want to go through the trouble of ripping and storing (where?) my collection. So this was great. When I started using Apple Music, they had everything anyway for $10/month, and never bothered to use Murfie. If I ever thought I had something valuable, I would never have shipped them to some startup.

Shivetya 7y ago
I have always wondered, I have ripped hundreds of CDs which sit in boxes which i never expect to access again; i do not even own a cd player. do I need to keep them indefinitely? what if they were lost, would I be obligated to delete the rips?
- curtis3389 7y ago
  IANAL, but here's a section from the relevant law: https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#117 https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#117 Based on that, I don't think you would need to delete them.
- rwallace 7y ago
  As I understand it (usual disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer; if you want to be sure, ask someone who is): - If you sell or give the CDs to someone else, you are legally obliged to delete the rips. - But if you toss them in a landfill, you are free and clear.
paulie_a 7y ago
I don't own a CD player. But for a few local bands and more major ones I bought them because while I can get them on Spotify. I wanted a permanent copy so ripped them to 320k and flac. Just in case. Those three or so were special to me.

mysterydip 7y ago

"Every CD and vinyl record you store at Murfie HQ is your property. We take that very seriously. In the event Murfie goes out of business, you will get back every CD and vinyl record you own in your current collection." A buyer beware for future sites that promise something similar to the above, it's not worth the webpage it's printed on. Regardless of initial sincerity, this could change at a moment's notice.

irongeek 7y ago
Yes, when there is no money left, that sincere person who wrote that statement will not be able to afford to send everything back. Faith in silos is a bad idea.
- paulryanrogers 7y ago
  Which makes the faith in Apple's recent pivot to privacy suspect. While it's financially viable it will continue. The moment it costs more than the alternative ... it's unlikely to endure. One might say their compromising in China is a sign they've already begun to change.
john_moscow 7y ago
I would say, seeing a company advertise something like this without an actual verifiable escrow mechanism is a huge red flag. Because it means they are targeting people who don't understand how limited liability works and are very likely not planning to hold up their promise.
userbinator 7y ago
A buyer beware for future sites that promise something similar to the above, it's not worth the webpage it's printed on. Regardless of initial sincerity, this could change at a moment's notice. We should call this Murfie's Law.
Dylan16807 7y ago
The promises about shipping can change. The ownership of the discs can't. If someone starts throwing CDs in the garbage they are going to get sued hard.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

userbinator 7y ago

“Abandoned discs will be recycled by the end of December,” read an email, “when the storage facility must be vacated.” Sounds like a job for the Jason Scott... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10064565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10064565 ...not to actually archive them, but to help the original owners get their property back.

donatj 7y ago

As the owner of a giant CD collection I'm honestly kind of bummed I didn't hear about this service sooner. About 6 months ago I spent a solid week gathering and ripping a ton of my older CDs to lossless. I still have a ton of albums that are just VBR mp3 I didn't care enough to re-rip.

rahuldottech 7y ago
> I'm honestly kind of bummed Even after learning that you would have lost your entire collection?
- donatj 7y ago
  I'd have them all ripped, right? Honestly I'd happily trade them all for lossless copies and my basement back.

danschumann 7y ago

I interviewed and got offered to work here. I saw the inside. They had like 1 guy working on ruby and he was leaving. Probably 5 or 10 college students sorting through big pallets of cds. This was like 2016.

quotha 7y ago

There are companies that will store your gold and silver too O.O

ken 7y ago

It sucks but it also seems no worse than 100 other startups that close up shop every month, or big company cloud services that get disscontinued. The user data in this case just happened to be stored on little plastic discs rather than AWS. At least it sounds like everyone had a local copy of their bits.

lgats 7y ago

Not your keys not your CDs.