Wanted: 15 billion music CDs

Byte Recycle, LLC, a Wisconsin-based technology-driven enterprise, is on a mission: free the country of the billions of music CDs lying idle in peoples’ closets, basements and garages. The company is launching murfie.com, an online music exchange that offers music enthusiasts an economical and ecologically friendly means of buying, selling, trading and storing single CDs or entire musical collections – all from the company’s central CD depository.

"Murfie makes it possible for people to use their music while shedding the custodial responsibility of having stacks of plastic discs and jewel cases around the house,” said Byte Recycle CEO Matthew Younkle. “CDs aren’t how most people listen to music anymore. Murfie also sets people free of their CDs by offering a green solution to the way people trade music they no longer want for music they love. This process helps ensure that unwanted plastic – literally tons of it – remains a valuable resource for reuse in the design and manufacture of new products rather than being buried in landfills.”

Murfie members retain ownership of their music until such time they decide to trade or sell one or more of their CDs. Murfie stores members’ CD collections and lists members’ albums that are available for sale or trade at murfie.com. The company also offers its members services to convert and retrieve their music. Any unwanted plastic and other materials are recycled. When retrieving their music, Murfie members can choose from a number of digital compression formats such as the popular MP3 or totally lossless digital formats like FLAC.

The online music exchange does not charge its members for trades and provides prepaid shipping kits for sending CDs to the company’s Madison-based depository. It does charge members $1 to convert and retrieve a full album as a digital file, making Murfie both more convenient and less expensive by combining quick and resource-efficient digital music delivery with full ownership of the CD it comes from. For a limited time, new users who sign up for Murfie and send in 50 CDs will receive a $10 credit. And for those who simply wish to use Murfie to safely store their music CDs, the company charges an annual fee of $12 to store collections of up to 500 CDs. Negotiated storage rates for music collections in excess of 500 CDs are available from Murfie.

Murfie is the latest venture from Younkle, the Wisconsin entrepreneur who founded Laminar Technologies in 2002 and invented its patented TurboTap® product. The TurboTap was built to pour a perfect glass of draft beer in about two seconds and has since its inception has been installed at dozens of major sports venues, restaurants and bars across the U.S.