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Springwise tries to bring you a variety of ideas: some you can start with a bit of help from your friends (or angels), and others work best if you have the marketing department of a USD 30 billion multinational behind you. This one is for the hands-on crowd. Brand new, Indianapolis-based Get Digital is a ‘human’ CD encoding service, offering a fast, affordable, and easy-to-use method for converting large personal CD collections to MP3s or other digital audio files. Sure, consumers can do this themselves, but do you really want to spend dozens of precious hours to make the final step to a hardware-free (and more convenient) life? This is how it works: Customers fill out the online order form, order the shipping containers, and select the options available to personalize their new digital library. They then submit the order and customized pre-paid shipping containers will be on their way to send their CDs to Get Digital. Customers pack the shipping containers with CDs. The shipping containers provide an easy and safe method of handling and transporting the collection. All shipments are 100% insured and tracked by FedEx. Upon arrival, the company’s automated encoding center converts the music to the format of the user’s choice, burns the compressed files onto DVD-R discs, and sends the DVDs and CDs back to the customer the next day. The company also provides a printed list detailing the collection. Customers receive their collection on the media of their choice, and enjoy! In Get Digital’s own words: ‘Leave your CDs where they belong — in the box!’ Prices start at USD 1.99 per CD for the first 200 CDs, USD 1.49 per CD for the next 200, and any CD over 400 will cost customers USD 0.99/CD. Still in start-up mode, Get Digital is attracting a mix of small users and professional music buffs; the latter quite capable of converting their thousands of CDs themselves, but preferring this service over losing hours and hours of their precious time.

Opportunities

We love any new business idea that makes everyday life simpler and more virtual! It’s global too: ‘Get Digital’ should appeal to music lovers around the world. And besides introducing this service to the rest of the world, may we advise other smart entrepreneurs to start looking at a video-to-dvd service? And in a few years’ time, do the follow-up for DVD to whatever all-digital format we will have by then? Please? And an urban service that actually picks up your boxes, and then hand-delivers them the next day? It’s definitely a niche, though if you also target professional music and video professionals… Yup, there are some happy tunes in this one!