Enough!

[richardfinegold]

Somehow I doubt that the OP really wants to change his habits. However, one sure fire way would be to get married.
Not only would most wives not let you budget for new purchases, but they probably would force you to purge your current collection to make way for other trivial items, such as furniture .

[teamsaint]

I'm looking forward to Hafod's contribution to this thread.

I'll begin to consider the concept of "enough" when my amazon wish list is empty.

incidentally, I recently had a tidy up, and bought a 500 cd storage case, for about £10. Obviously I could have spent the tenner on some Cds, but there you go.

Into this put all the CDs that I felt i was unlikely to play, or had a much superior version , or whatever. I threw the cases away, two bin liners full in fact, and they proved to be un recyclable.
It created some space, and cleared a couple of shelves. However, the space created is now just a fading memory. And oddly, I have played really quite a lot of the Cds since the tidy up, and found some gems.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Ten years ago. I was driving for long enough to listen to a complete Ring cycle whilst on the road. I managed to listen to my entire CD collection within a year. However, my collection has nearly doubled since then.
The industry needs to be aware that downloaders are less likely to collect for the sake of it, so will make far fewer purchases.

[reinerfan]

It's a disease! Approaching 80 I shall not have enough time left to more than occasionally sample my collection, with over 18000 CDs and SACDs, never mind the numerous new boxes piled up. I do manage to keep up with cataloguing and listening to new single discs, but the sets are another matter.
Recently I got rid of over 1500 cassettes, which made way for shelving for another 2000 CDs. My excuse is that all the shelving saves on decorating!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

18,000!

[muzzer]

Hmmm. And to think CDs were an advance on LPs because they took up less space......I couldn't face binning them. Think of those lonely empty shelves........Cleared for (even) more books.....

[Roehre]

.... My excuse is that all the shelving saves on decorating!

Thank you for the tip, Reinerfan

[verismissimo]

...

I bought the three Karajan 1960s/70s/80s boxes, got rid of the duplicates and have played possibly 10% of the 246 CDs contained therein...

There's the root of your problem, Pet. Karajan.

For me it's Wagner.

[doversoul1]

Somehow I doubt that the OP really wants to change his habits. However, one sure fire way would be to get married.
Not only would most wives not let you budget for new purchases, but they probably would force you to purge your current collection to make way for other trivial items, such as furniture .

Be aware of the rest. Some can easily outdo any husband.

[Pianoman]

Spotify or Quobuz is your friend here - I'm listening to more music than ever without adding to the groaning shelves, and although I can't resist the odd purchase, it's quite a liberating feeling, as it makes you really think about which streamed music you really then want on a conventional disc. You do indeed listen more and buy less...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

My CD collection is about the same size as Roehre mentions in his #6 (about 5000) - but with a lot more "duplications": I prefer to have at least four different interpretations of a work that I particularly admire "available" so that I don't start thinking of an individual recording as being "the work" itself.

Having said that, and as funds have withered somewhat in the last ten months, I have decided only to buy CDs of works I don't already have in the collection, or in the case of pre-20thC repertoire, to supplement modern instrument recordings with HIPP ones. That's the theory, and I've nearly held to it; 50p items in charity shops usually break my resolve - and the "Bargains" Thread takes a lot of will-power to resist! I have a backlog - mainly of CDs in those bargain boxes of Baroque Music; I usually try to give the disc a play-through to check for errors, and I don't particularly wish to spend all that time with just one type of Music playing "in the background". As a result I have spent less time actually listening - so I haven't been posting very much recently on the "What are you listening to" Thread. But there have been several times when my attention has been grabbed by what my peripheral hearing is picking up, and I will play a disc again and again, genuinely listening with rapt attention and intellectual passion. Frequently, these are works I'd never encountered before by composers I might not even have heard of - and that I might never have encountered had I not bought the boxed set.

So, "buy fewer; listen more" isn't that helpful - basically, to what do I listen? Radio3?! Well, that's 80% of my CD collection repertoire that I'll never get to hear again (a loss barely compensated by greater familiarity with the Hungarian & Slavonic Dances and a flock of ascending larks). And whilst it's a fair bet that I'll never listen to the Bernstein Mass again, should the need ever arise it's there in the collection. A sudden urge to listen to the Delius Violin Concerto? No problem. A large CD collection releases us from a reliance on other people choosing what we listen to, and when we listen to it. They look wonderful in a room, and (like our book collections) give insights to visitors (I love looking at other people's books, Music and what they put on their walls - when invited, of course!) - it opens conversations and bonds friendships.

The real question is "What do you gain from jettisoning discs (other than exact duplicates)?" Speaking as someone who "downsized" twenty years ago and sold off 2/3 of his then collection, can I just beg anyone thinking of making a similar mistake - don't be so bloody stupid!

You'll only miss the ones you get rid of.

[Nick Armstrong]

...with a lot more "duplications": I prefer to have at least four different interpretations of a work that I particularly admire "available" so that I don't start thinking of an individual recording as being "the work" itself.

Oh I didn't read 'duplications' in that way in Pet's post - I thought he meant when the same work/performance turned up repeatedly in reissues etc.

I totally agree about the importance of multiple (as opposed to 'duplicated') versions.... perhaps not taking it to Alpensymphonic proportions! ... for favourite pieces. I think I have over a dozen Mahler 5s, Das Lieds, Ravel Piano Concertos...

You'll only miss the ones you get rid of.

I haven't missed a single one I got rid of a year ago.

(I love looking at other people's books, Music and what they put on their walls - when invited, of course!)

I'm so glad you added the last four words...! It dispelled certain immediate visions

[Roehre]

....

I totally agree about the importance of multiple (as opposed to 'duplicated') versions.... perhaps not taking it to Alpensymphonic proportions! ... for favourite pieces. I think I have over a dozen Mahler 5s, Das Lieds, Ravel Piano Concertos... .....

But here the streaming services come in, not to mention R3's emphasis on war horses.

[umslopogaas]

Until recently, I would buy a few CDs every month because reviews in the Gramophone sounded interesting, supplemented by a few more that I had heard on R3. I could easily play them all before the next batch arrived, there was even time to play some again, or even some of the previous purchases. Then the record companies started selling these huge compilation boxes at silly prices, around two quid a disc. It seemed impossible not to snap them up at those prices, so I did, even though in several cases I already had some of the contents - The complete Maria Callas, for instance. So, I currently have about five hundred CDs, in big boxes, lying on the living room floor. I am playing my way through them selectively, for example in the case of the Callas box I am only playing the ones I havent already got, which isnt many. To have this sudden flood of cheap CDs is a bit worrying, but I dont think it will last. It seems to me to be the companies' last attempt to sell their back catalogue on disc, before the world abandons CDs for downloads. But I must put up that shelf, I keep falling over the wretched things.

[visualnickmos]

[COLOR="#0000FF
I totally agree about the importance of multiple (as opposed to 'duplicated') versions.... perhaps not taking it to Alpensymphonic proportions! ... for favourite pieces. I think I have over a dozen Mahler 5s, Das Lieds, Ravel Piano Concertos... [/COLOR]

There are quite a few works that I have several versions of, but only a small handful can I actually 'guess' on a blind listening, as to which version it is. Just out of pure curiosity, could you identify which Ravel piano concerto (version, that is not 'which'....) if you blind-listen?
I suppose I'm really asking if we can become so familiar with several versions that we can identify the version readily?

PS - sorry for the rather clumsy phrasing of the above.....