I will attempt to summarise my answer at the end, but first, please indulge me while I ramble on and answer the question and discuss some of the points raised.
I would suggest that you enlist the assistance of the "tech savvy" members of your family and take them up on their offer to download your music collection for you.
This would be my first pre requisite before I consigned my albums and CD's to the bin. ( but perhaps this is not necessary. )
If you have the time, do your research and then put your collection up for sale online,
you may be able to make a few quid out of the people who love nostalgia.
For me, one who has seen the light and realised that nostalgia aint what it used to be, and that the good old days were infact the crap old days..
As mankind moves forward and you have the eyes to see, things are on the up and up... but that's another story.
Now, back then, I loved the old 12" Albums and still have many at home, I loved the holistic experience of owning an album,
Having the decorated cardboard cover, reading the credits and lyrics, and of course that big black 2 dimensional replica of the sun that emits those wonderful sounds once it is set into rotation
and the stylus is placed at the edge to work its way inwards.. But it had its limitations..
CD's were a massive move forward, as the sound quality improved significantly, they were more portable and the music on the CD was much more navigable.
There was no chance of the CD wearing out through general use as there was no physical contact between the diamond stylus and the less durable vinyl.
My car has a CD player, so many of my CD's reside there, but of course I can now connect my phone to the car audio system and play music stored on my phone into the car audio system.
The Nay sayers will say that music did not sound the same once CD's came out and that it was cold and sterile.
Utter C0ck, the clarity of digital music is far superior to that analogue sound produced by vinyl, and a laser beam can read and transmit far more information than a tiny diamond tipped stylus ( being dragged along what looks like an extreme close up of a rocky canyon ) can ever produce.
Now we have digital music that exists in individual named files, the most common being MP3 format.
A LOT of this digital music will have initially started life on A CD or even a vinyl record and been encoded into this format onto a computer.
The beauty about digital information is that nothing is lost during the copying process, so a copy that has been derived over many generations will be identical to the original.
A typical album track of medium quality would occupy about 3MB of disk space, so lets say 10 tracks per album which = 30 Mb / Album.
that " medium" quality is still good quality by any standard, but you can record tracks with much higher quality if you so desire.
The file size may increase by 50 % or more, but I challenge you to be able to tell the difference once the audio quality gets above 160kb ( more on that in a moment )
Most MP3 recording software allows the user to select the bit rate to use when recording.
The lower the bit rate, the more information the encoder will discard when creating the file.
Bit rates range from 96 to 320 kilobytes per second (Kbps).
Using a bit rate of 128 Kbps usually results in a sound quality equivalent to what you'd hear on the radio today, not those old transistor radios of our youth..
Many music sites and blogs urge people to use a bit rate of 160 Kbps or higher if they want the MP3 file to have the same sound quality as a CD.
The beauty of digital music files is that these days, most devices like mobile phones, tablets, PC's, laptops and even your TV can play them back to you.
Even a cheap set of headphones attached to a mobile phone, tablet or laptop ( laptops will soon be a thing of the past too, so beware before investing in one of those ) can produce excellent sound quality from a digital file on a simple device.
A Decent set of headphones is they key. even those ear buds can have a good sound quality, but the traditional over the ears headphones are probably the best.
I have some Dr Dre "BEATS" Bluetooth headphones, and the sound quality is in another dimension. Way beyond what my old man's PYE music system and Wharfdale speakers could ever reproduce.
Creating or choosing the digital music.
If you create your own files from your existing collection, bearing in mind that Vinyl can be reproduced into MP3, but it will not improve the quality of the sound given the limitations of the original medium itself, so it may be better to download those in MP3 format or record them from the CD version.
Storing your music.
for me, its a no brainer, a decent sized USB Pen drive ( 16 - 32 GB ) can hold hundreds of albums, and once you have your entire collection on a pen drive,
This can then be copied onto another pen drive as a backup and or your computer.
Of course, you can transfer the files to your tablet or phone by copying the files to a micro SD card, that most tablets and phones will either already have or have a slot in which to insert one.
If you have a gmail account, you will also have a G Drive attached to that account,
This is a virtual hard drive that resides on the cloud or the internet if you prefer to use that name. this will be about 15GB of storage on the cloud. You can upload your music to that drive as well.
1GB would equal sufficient storage for about about 30 Albums recorded at 160kbs. ( Good Quality )
Now if one night you find yourself in some dingy motel in the arse end of nowhere, you can fire up your tablet, log into your Google account, then go to your G drive and start playing your music from there..
(The G Drive can also be used to store your photos and documents in the same way as a normal hard drive).
ALL my photos and files these days go direct to my G Drive, so whenever I get a new phone or tablet, I log into Google and all my stuff is there in an instant.
People whinge about privacy, but they are going to have to learn a few lessons about that in order for us all to move on in this world, I have no such concerns, as I do not keep anything that I would not want anyone else to see or hear on there anyway.
No brainer really..
These music files will not expire, though there may be some paid for music services that will give you access to music files for a limited amount of time, depending on the subscriber level. But any file that you have on your device is yours and will be forever.
Youtube now have a service that allows you to buy the videos that you watch and download them to your phone, tablet etc... for a monthly subscription fee.
Youtube is a great source for music and the videos that accompany them, some people have created some great artwork in music videos that compliment or even enhance the musical experience.
You can watch old favourite performances and concerts too ! its all there !
Google Play Music and YouTube Red cost about 10 UK pounds a month, you get added benefits of not having to see adverts on Youtube once you take out this subscription.
As you start to buy in new music files, remember to back them up also..
So to summarise.
You can record and or repurchase all your existing music and maybe procure them for free with some help from the tech savvie relatives.
Once you have everything you need, you can then decide what to sell and what to chuck out and what to keep.
It just may be possible that you have some vinyl 12 and 7 " that may be worth a few quid, and if you have the time to research and separate the wheat from the chaff, you could make a few quid.
The music quality will be far superior to the Vinyl recordings, and I suggest that you take up this challenge and compare some music to hear for yourself.
Therefore it may not be necessary to have your vinyl converted into MP3, but that is up to you and your personal preference to that particular music. Yes, there was a certain charm to the analogue sound and those clicks and bumps, but is it really better than what can be reproduced to day digitally ?
Your CD's can be quickly converted to MP3 File format on any PC, I can assist of you do not have anyone to show you how, but at the very least you will need a PC or laptop with a CD drive and Windows 7.
I can talk you through that quite easily. Allow about 10 mins per CD to convert them to said MP3 file format, so those files can be copied off the PC and onto your pen drive.
A lot of software will even put the album cover with the MP3 files and store the CD music in its own folder of the album name.
Get all this music into one place, an SD card or USB Pen drive, then copy it so you have a backup, and remember to refresh your backups as and when you add to your music collection.
upload your favourite music to your Cloud storage such as G Drive, ( If you don't have GMail or Google account, There are plenty of ways of getting hold of free cloud storage and it costs very little if you need to expand.)
decide how you are going to access these files, such as phone or tablet. You can copy them from the USB Pen drive to your phone or tablet via a computer and USB lead.
Set yourself up with a couple of sets of headphones, one decent set for home use and another set for travelling.
Enjoy the music whenever you want, and do not forget to keep backups, I cannot stress enough how important backups are.
I hope that helps, its always a pleasure A-Four...