Comment by 8bitsrule

I also moved many times in the past. Once CD-quality settled, I gifted my vinyls to a thrift store. (The 'art' was immaterial.)

20 years ago, I ripped all of my CDs into 192K MP3s (perfect enough for my ears) using an online metadata service. Getting rid of the 'jewel cases' (and eventually all of their non-CD content) but retaining the CDs (4 Logic cases worth, 3 sq. feet) saved a ton of room.

For backup I archived the thousands of MP3s onto an 80GB Seagate which I organized by genre, then stored in a shoebox. 12 years later I copied the Seagate to two more HDs. It worked fine (but gave-up-the-ghost later that year).

I've relied on those files since. Unlike several dead self-burned CD-Rs, the manu'd CDs (I never use) seem to have remained healthy in the cases at room temp.