A small Wisconsin company stored thousands of peoples CDs, then suddenly vanished

Last month, almost a million CDs stored in Wisconsin seemed to disappear. For years, thousands of people paid a Madison-based company, named Murfie, to rip, stream, and store their CDs, vinyl, and cassettes. But a few weeks ago, Murfie’s website went offline and nearly all communication from the company ceased. Now, customers fear their physical music collections may be lost forever.

Murfie’s main service was digitizing people’s audio CDs for high-fidelity cloud playback. You’d mail in your collection, Murfie would rip them to the cloud, and if you kept paying a storage fee, Murfie would hold onto your physical collection and even let you buy and sell with other users. For nine years, it had done that. But late last month, the service...

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