Great idea. Too bad it can't scale because of the shipping headaches (and risk).

It's cool because I'm sure they keep a rip of every CD they get, so when they get another one they don't have to rip it again. After a while it becomes very cost effective.

Slim Devices has been doing this for a while now. https://secure.slimdevices.com/order/ripping.cgi

Here's their faq: http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_ripping_faq.html

(I'm not associated with them. Just a happy customer)

There is already a service called LoadPod. A Dutch company a while ago offered noobs to convert their cd's to mp3 (for about 1.50 euro per cd) but I believe they were shut down by the music industry or copyright protection agencies or something.

Thinking about these services a bit more leads to some interesting possibilities; see http://spaces.msn.com/jdanielsmith/blog/cns!370A3E3C204E7D6D!336.entry