Amazon - Trade in Used CDs for Gift Cards

Amazon now lets you trade in cds for gift cards

Online retailer Amazon is extending its Trade-In Program today to also cover CDs – you know, those round, shiny things collecting dust in the back of your closet? Starting now, customers can send in their old CDs to Amazon in exchange for Amazon.com Gift Cards, which can then used to purchase anything on Amazon.com, including, of course, any of Amazon’s 19 million MP3′s. (sorry category is wrong and I can't change on G. Chrome)

The Amazon Trade-In Program, for those unfamiliar, is a service that allows customers to send in items to a third-party merchant in exchange for Amazon gift cards. The program currently supports a wide variety of merchandise including movies, textbooks, video games, electronics (including phones, iPads, iPods, Kindles, non-Kindles, laptops, etc.), and more. The items can be packed up and shipped in one box, so if you want to throw your old iPod on top of your CD collection, you can now do that too.

Trade-ins take somewhere between 6 to 10 business days to process, depending on how you shipped them in (e.g., UPS, Post Office). Once verified, you’ll be notified that your item was accepted by the merchant, which you can track in your Trade-In account.

Also currently unavailable is pricing information – that is, how much you’ll be able to get for your CDs once sent in. Surely pricing will be variable depending on artist, we would guess. After all, your Beatles CD will probably sell fast…your Barry Manilow, not so much.

We’ve reached out to Amazon for more details on this, and will update when we hear back.

Update, 1 PM ET: We’ve been calling and emailing Amazon all day to get pricing details. No response. But for what it’s worth, when listing a new CD for sale (as a merchant), it goes for around $2.00.

Update: 6 PM ET: Finally! The site has gone live. Here’s what Amazon says about pricing:

“Values will be determined based on the individual CD; you can search titles to see the costs.

Items that don’t meet the product description or eligibility criteria are considered not acceptable and will be subject to the Trade-In Return Terms and Conditions. Rejected Items that are eligible for return will be shipped to you within 14 days after receipt, at no cost to you. Rejection reasons and shipping progress tracking for the return package can be viewed from Your Trade-In Account.”

http://www.amazon.com/Music-Trade-In/b/ref=banner_TI_CD?t=UTF8&n...

If I dont have case anymore, will they still accept it?

After researching other CD trade-in sites, I found that jewel case often increases the value received.

The shipping costs make the deal non-profitable though.

big brother is coming,,next will be the "books'

Time to sell back the hundreds of CDs I got through their price mistake a while back.....

yakky said:   Call me paranoid, but I'm seeing a future of everyone has no CDs, all their music is in "the cloud" and RIAA comes knocking on your cloud providers door with papers in hand. Say Mr. Could Provider, we need records of all the music your subscribers claim to own.

Exactly. If it's not a drm free copy on your hard drive or CD then you don't really own it. Period.

Now if I could just use Barcode Scanner app on my smart phone to check the SKUs.

yakky said:   Call me paranoid, but I'm seeing a future of everyone has no CDs, all their music is in "the cloud" and RIAA comes knocking on your cloud providers door with papers in hand. Say Mr. Could Provider, we need records of all the music your subscribers claim to own.

I won't call you paranoid, maybe not well informed. There is a better future that a lot of people have been enjoying for many years now. The music ripped from CDs is stored locally on your player. In which case you still don't need CDs and can trade them back.

aleck said:   yakky said:   Call me paranoid, but I'm seeing a future of everyone has no CDs, all their music is in "the cloud" and RIAA comes knocking on your cloud providers door with papers in hand. Say Mr. Could Provider, we need records of all the music your subscribers claim to own.

I won't call you paranoid, maybe not well informed. There is a better future that a lot of people have been enjoying for many years now. The music ripped from CDs is stored locally on your player. In which case you still don't need CDs and can trade them back.

So if you rip a CD, then sell it back Amäzon, do you still own the MP3's you ripped? Wouldn't that be like going to your local library, ripping all their CDs and DVDs, then returning them and saying you own everything you ripped?

newbietx said:   In this case, the ownership was with the person when they purchased the item (CD), they then ripped it, which is legally ok if you can show and prove ownership. But when they sold it Amazon and no longer have true ownership of the original but hold on to to the ripped copy, the water gets murky. That probably is illegal.

There's nothing murky about it. You are not allowed to keep copies of something you have relinquished ownership of.

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/

yakky said:   Call me paranoid, but I'm seeing a future of everyone has no CDs, all their music is in "the cloud" and RIAA comes knocking on your cloud providers door with papers in hand. Say Mr. Could Provider, we need records of all the music your subscribers claim to own.
Breaking News: RIAA hires 1,000,000 new employees to drive all around the world, knocking on people's doors.

Not. Gonna. Happen.

Bah, edit. Didn't read your post...you were referring to cloud providers, not consumers. Nevermind.

buy a ton at garage sales for under a dollar....

Technologist said:   The only way this is worth it is if you have already ripped copies, and just want to QUICKLY get some cash (without the hassle of eBay/cl/Amazon marketplace/flea markets.

This is exactly why they will make plenty of money off of this program. People think buying a CD, ripping it, and then selling the CD is no problem once they have the files.

I want to have CD's for the media I really like, though nowadays they aren't really necessary for everyday listening, you might be surprised how much different a real CD sounds if you have a decent audio system.

Cloud paranoia is not paranoia in my book. I don't currently use a cloud music system but if or when I do, you can be assured I will either have CD or otherwise purchased media for every song or have purchased the files through that provider.

They've already went after the ISP's for this type of information weeding through torrent and home pc information for general users.

Do you really think they will not do the same thing when there are two or three cloud providers that have already done 99% of the sorting work for them?