Make Some Extra Bucks: Sell Your Unwanted MP3s

— -- You may have sold off your unwanted CDs and DVDs at a garage sale-or its eBay equivalent. Now, you can sell off your unwanted MP3s to top up your Christmas budget.

A new web start-up called Bopaboo has created a digital marketplace where you can set up your own mini store for music downloads. You just upload the music you want to sell and set a price. Users can then browse through your store and buy songs.

The only catch: no DRM (Digital Rights Management) wrapped music is allowed. That means, if you bought music from the iTunes Music Store, chances are you won't be able to sell it, unless you purchased songs from the iTunes Plus program.

If you bought plenty of DRM-free music or ripped your CD collection, you can grab a private beta invitation on Bopaboo and sell your unwanted songs. Bopaboo will keep a percentage of your earnings in exchange for the service.

Now, there's a big question mark behind the legality of Bopaboo. How will the new service stop people from reselling the same songs over and over -- you thought about that, right? Well, Bopaboo CEO Alex Meshkin says that the company has the technology in place to prevent users from selling a song more than once. This method apparently takes a digital fingerprint of every uploaded file -- an algorithm similar to Gracenote's song identification.

It is yet to be seen if Bopaboo's tagline "Stop illegally sharing and start legally selling!" will keep 28-year-old Meshkin's company from being sued into oblivion by major recording labels or the RIAA. Still, the service sounds like a good idea -- think about it: the eBay of unwanted MP3s.