CDs aren’t exactly the latest thing. Many of us download our music off the Internet these days, and a lot of people can’t be troubled to move a bunch of disks around. CDs are so out of date that the ones I own all date back to the 90s or earlier. The best solution to the inconvenience and approaching obsolescence of the CD is to rip all your CDs to your hard drive or SSD equivalent. Fortunately, this is quite easy to do in Rhythmbox, an open source, lightweight, stable media player which comes pre-installed as the default player in many Linux distros, including Ubuntu. If you’re using Windows, you unfortunately can’t install Rhythmbox, but you can use another open source media player called VLC to rip your CDs.
A lot of newer computers don’t even come with optical drives nowadays, so before you start ripping, make sure your computer has a functional CD or DVD drive.
In case you don’t already have Rhythmbox, you can easily install it in Ubuntu and other Ubuntu-based distros by opening a terminal and typing:
sudo apt install rhythmbox
Make sure your CD is in the drive and start Rhythmbox. If you’re in Music view in the Library, click Import.
Or under Devices, select the CD you want to rip. Then click Extract.
Rhythmbox will automatically add the extracted (ripped) files to your library. To find them, click on Recently Added in the left navigation bar.
If you have any trouble getting your CD to load, remove the disk from the drive and clean it before trying again. However, be sure to always clean CDs in an outward motion, from the inner hole at the center to the outer edge. Use mild detergent or vinegar on a soft cloth or sponge. Never clean in circles, as this can scratch the CD.
If there are scratches on the CD, you can use regular white toothpaste (not gel) to remove them.
If you’re still having problems, try a different CD. If this doesn’t work, there may be something wrong with your CD drive. Try ripping your CD on a different computer, and see if that solves the problem.
It usually only takes 10 to 15 minutes to rip an entire CD.
To play your ripped files, just select Recently Added under Playlists and select a track to play.
You can also edit the information on your ripped CD tracks, like title, artist, album, composer, genre, track number, disc number, and year, and more, by right-clicking a track and selecting Properties. To change the properties of multiple tracks at a time, select them with SHIFT + Click or CTRL + Click, then type the property you want in the field. Having the right information in these fields makes it easier to organize tracks and create queues and playlists, and fetch album art, in the Rhythmbox windows. This is a great way to organize your music by album, genre or composer.
That’s all there is to it. As long as you have enough space on your hard drive or SSD, you can easily rip your entire CD collection to your Linux PC.
Living the Linux Lifestyle 