I spend virtually my entire expendable income on CD's but since that's not much I can only pick up 2 or 3 a week. When I go back to Uni later in the year it might be down to 1 or even none a week so I can't really see my collection growing to much in the immediate future.

Currently I have about 1,500 albums and to be honest it's not to much of a problem and I only have a very small flat. I'd say they take up about a third of a wall from ceilling to floor so 'pruning' isn't on the agenda right now. At current record buying trends I probably have enough room for at least 5 years worth of purchases. By then hopefully I won't be living in this shithole!

My big storage problems are books and, especially, videos. I'm reluctant to do so my I reckon I'm going to pretty much get rid of my entire video collection it takes up ALOT of space. They are most just in piles on the floor.

ha. yeah. that's more of a problem for me too.

....and people HATE helping me move!

i bought this cd storage piece of funiture from ikea that holds 1000 cds.....that was a good start. so that is full plus 4 black plastic boxes with slots that hold 100 cd's apiece (that sits on the the piece from ikea)

then there are the boxes in the closet.....and the boxes in the basement...

recently i've been importing all of my music to the computer....im up to about 1600 albums on my hard drive right now....

I manage my collection...
the best that I can.

My tastes have gone through many changes over the years and I've been able to sell some stuff and not regret it at all. In fact, I've never sold a CD I regretted selling. I'm sure I have at least 100 more I could sell and never miss but I still find reasons to keep a lot of them.

I still have less than 1,000 CDs though so my management problem probably isn't as big as a lot of yours. My main struggle is looking at my CD collection and realizing how materialistic I am.

I wouldn't consider that materialistic.

Steve

"Without music, life would be a mistake"
-Nietzche

I never have the "oh no I shouldn't have sold that one" problem. I'll never want to listen to "Turn on the Bright Lights" again, I've given "Moon Pix" a fair shake and just don't like it, etc. I sell CD's I haven't had any inclination to listen to after buying them and listening to them a couple times on Amazon, and it helps keep my total collection relatively small and (I think) quality.

Yeah, about the time I start thinking about this, the devil on my left shoulder tells me it's ok to have one hobby and to turn my focus on getting rid of DVDs and books which I have in much smaller quantities. After little struggle I give up, turn on the TV and start dwelling on how much time I waste in a given week.

I hear ya on just about every point here. I go through phases all the time. 5-7 years ago I was on a massive jazz kick and just bought and bought and bought, much of it thoughtlessly, and a couple years ago it hit me that while I love jazz, I didn't care for much of what I'd picked up in that time because I'd gone on autopilot, had traded in a bunch of rock discs for a bunch of jazz classics that I'd find every time I walked in the stores. It wasn't bad music - these were all relatively big names in the genre - but like anything, some of it just didn't suit my tastes. And when that phase ended, I found myself with a lot of jazz I didn't want to listen to and very little rock that I did.

So I wound up rebuying some of what I'd traded, but overall I still tend to look at these things (what I like to call The Big Purges) as positive - I might get rid of some good stuff, but I'm also chopping out the chaff that I might otherwise not have. It is, however, hard to make that seem logical to most other people . . .

. . . which brings up an interesting question: those of you who do trade things in, do you find that people give you strange looks when you tell them how big a fan of music you are, yet you trade stuff in regularly? I've noticed that people tend to act like I'm crazy if I trade stuff in. I try to explain that I regard music as art, and like any art collection, there are some things that wind up in the small "permanent collection" and others that are on display for a limited but unknown amount of time, and someday it will be time to let them go so new works can take their places. Were I not to purge, I'd have so many CDs I wouldn't have any place to store them - nor time to listen. I figure that had I never traded stuff in, I'd probably have 10-12,000 CD by now (after 17 years of collecting.) Of course, had I not traded stuff in, I'd not have gotten quite a bit of what I did because of trade, so who knows.

Same here - I've got many hundreds of CDRs of bootlegs laying around completely haphazardly, no organization. It's a mess. And I rarely listen to even a few of them anymore, and can't see ever doing so again. There are, of course, a select few that I'm sure I will, but the problem is finding which ones I'd want to keep. And they're all worthless, essentially - that's what bothers me. All those many, many spindles of CDRs, many bought when they weren't cheap like they are today, and they're just going to waste.

Its like you're inside my head.

Its so easy to pick up canonized jazz that's not really your bag. I wouldn't be surprised if I eventually end up trading in a lot of the Miles Davis cds I picked up over the last several years. BMG has such a large catalog of his stuff that I had so many before even really considering how much I liked him. Obviously he's a jazz stud and there's no question of qual, but he's not my personal favorite by a long shot.

I like the art collection analogy. That's a good way of looking at it. I guess that's the real problem I'm facing is that I don't really have much stuff that I think is bad in any sense (all that stuff was traded in right away) its just a question of how much and which ones don't belong in the permanent collection.

To make matters worse on a lot of purge candidates, I feel like I should give them a listen or two before trading 'em in. But who really wants to spend a lot of time listening to the part of your collection you think you could do without. What a f'n catch 22...

np: Joao Bosco S/T

i've bought, sold and re-bought teenage fanclub bandwagonesque 4 seperate times.

Did you buy it new every time? If so, that's like $50 total! It would be really funny if you bought, sold and re-bought the same copy each time.

bandwagonesque is worth 50 bucks.....(but shouldnt be allowed into the hands of someone that would sell it once much less 4 times )

I have a relatively small collection. Small by this board's standards, and large by everyone else I know's standards.

However, financial restraints in college forced me to trade in stuff I didn't like. Sometimes I traded them in to go on road trips. Other times I used them to buy something else. Probably only once did I regret it.

i think i still have that on cassette.

i have a ton of bootleg cd's as well, that i have gotten from trades, or d/l'ed that i don't see myself really playing either.

in my history, the only bootlegs I ever played alot were from shows I was actually at....not random ones that were just available..

ihave alot of radiohead's and afghan whig shows, that I wasn't at, but still take up space.....

I built Redlands, that's how I manage my music collection. One of my bedrooms is wall to wall with mine and (the now defunct) Senators CD's, the Senator's extensive and my less extensive book collections, current magazines, and some of my records. The rest of my records and books are on shelves in my office.

The best thing I ever did was buying an external HD and ripping all the CD's (I will rip those goddamned records if its the last thing I..........); I mean, I might put all my CD's in storage (why not? I'm in the storage business after all)

I have a semi-organized method.

I have 19 cases that hold 15 CDs each. Those are pretty much in order of purchase since 1992. I don't do it to be anal. I do it so it's easier to locate stuff.

Then I have 4 shelves full of CDs:

1st shelf - best ofs, soundtracks, EPs, Blonde Vinyl CDs, out of print/rare stuff
2nd shelf - popular music (Depeche Mode, Oasis, White Stripes, etc)
3rd shelf - indie/non-mainstream (Apples in Stereo, Spoon, Old 97s, etc)
4th shelf - all of my underground Christian type stuff (Starflyer 59, The Throes, Daniel Amos, etc)

Then I have a case of 100 CDs that I don't care enough about to keep them in their original cases. (Some alternative and indie, but a lot of prog and CCM)

I also have 2 cases of stuff that I hold for e-bay sales. It's mostly out of print CCM based stuff. CCM goes out of print fast. As a result, it tends to be worth a lot within a very short time. Whenever I am going through some $1 bargain bin and find something I know I can sell for over $10, I pick it up and hold it for selling later.

I won't even go into my ripped stuff.

I rotate things in and out occasionally. Outbound CDs are ripped, then I'll sell 'em on ebay if I think I can get more than $5.00. Alternately, I'll take them to a used CD store. I'll take the hard hitters (Billboard top 200 type CDs) to Wherehouse Music cause they'll usually give around $4.00-$6.00 for those. I'll take some of the lesser knowns to Hastings or the local indie store and do a trade in (4 for 1 new at Hastings). I'll take the bargain Bin CDs, scratched up CDs, promos, BMG Direct CDs to Half Price Books cause they'll buy anything.

[quote="tcj"]
I hear ya on just about every point here. I go through phases all the time. 5-7 years ago I was on a massive jazz kick and just bought and bought and bought, much of it thoughtlessly, and a couple years ago it hit me that while I love jazz, I didn't care for much of what I'd picked up in that time because I'd gone on autopilot, had traded in a bunch of rock discs for a bunch of jazz classics that I'd find every time I walked in the stores. It wasn't bad music - these were all relatively big names in the genre - but like anything, some of it just didn't suit my tastes. And when that phase ended, I found myself with a lot of jazz I didn't want to listen to and very little rock that I did.



I try to make a conscious effort to spread out the kinds of music I get to avoid this. Of course there are times when I go on a run of one type of music but I figure as long as I make an effort I will have musical harmony in my collection.