Downsizing CD Collection?

An imminent move to a slightly smaller house has me scrutinizing my pretty large CD collection (800o? 10,000? No idea!). Two developments in recent years have made this a more palatable project: (1) my return to vinyl after more than 20 years away; (2) mega classical box sets.

My personal vinyl resurgence means when I now listen to The White Album, it's going to be an original US, a UK stereo from my late 70s Beatles Blue Box, or the recent mono reissue. The 2009 CD, good as it is, is unlikely to get much if any play going forward. Ditto the Grateful Dead, Deep Purple, Van Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Neil Young: hard to imagine wanting to hear the CDs of these ever again now that I own Warner green and Reprise brown labels. My growing collection of Ludwig, Porky, Blair's, Piros, Wally, and TimTom mastered LPs has taken listening enjoyment to another level. And I've become more critical of CD remastering. Some of it is great (random example: the UK Blodwyn Pig "Ahead Rings Out" CD sounds almost exactly like the LP), some awful (recent George Harrison LITMW), some just OK (New Order reissues; the original AND recent vinyl are worlds better.).

On the classical front the bargain box sets, true embarrassments of riches, have made many of my single CDs redundant. I've sold a lot of them off but with some exceptions CDs have little trade value left.

So what to do? The LPs will get price of place, but for many of the CDs I'm tempted to do what a Japanese "unclutter" expert advises her clients: throw everything in a pile in the middle of the room, take out what you really want to keep, and marvel at the discardable mess that's left. Oh the complete Europe 72 CD steamer trunk and many others will be off limits (e.g. Beach Boys stereo/mono reissues), but otherwise it's on. I'm just not sure what to do with the discards.

 

Recommendation - read previous threads on this same topic.

 

Hard to believe, but this subject has come up before a few times.

 

Don't do it

 

If anyone in Sydney wants to downsize their CD collection I'd be happy to help

 

The few times I downsized I regretted it badly. Now I upsize.

 

I may not, though much of it may end up in the garage for now. I've spend many hours over the years scanning the shelves for tradeables, but now that the used market has bottomed out this is a much less fun exercise. But do I really need both the mono and stereo "S.F. Sorrow" CDs, now that I have the recent vinyl reissue and the stunning sounding Pretty Things vinyl twofer on UK Harvest with Parachute on it as well?

 

Sold my entire CD collection about 7 years ago and have never missed it. I find that it usually feels very good to get rid of things. Have also sold about 75% of our massive book collection and that's been mostly painless. I've even managed to keep our vinyl collection under 300 with periodic culling.

 

It sounds like you have a method of logically thinning down the herd ....like the examples your gave.
However I wouldn't recommend just dumping big boxes of your CDs.

If you insist on doing so, I guess I can give you my mailing address....

 

Yeah, it only leads to regrets... I downsized a bit several years ago and learned my lesson. Keep it all. I do have a small pile of doubles, which will show up in the classifieds one day.

 

You'll regret it.

 

I've methodically sold CDs over the years, usually without regrets and almost always for store credit. Without selling the collection would be even more out of hand that it is.

 

Then you don't need any advice. You're good to go!

 

My current attitude is that I do not need to keep everything that I like, only what I love. Too much "liked" music sits for way too long between listens. Listening to something new continually takes precedent over past "amusements" so I now consider my collection to be more of a slowly revolving door than an overpowering monolith.

 

I sold off 90% of my vinyl collection years ago; never looked back. Well, there have been a few nostalgic moments, they do pass pretty quickly when I sit down to listen.

I know it's not exactly the same, but...

 

My family tells me I have too much music. "Rubbish!" I say, "You can't have too much!"

 

Yes

 

You appear to have a good strategy for deciding what to keep and what to discard. I would think you would know the answer to the question "I'm just not sure what to do with the discards" - take them to the local second-hand store, advertise them on the forum here (perhaps in bundles) for sale or free-to-a-good-home, have a yard/garage sale, advertise them on ebay, or donate them to your favourite charity. Just don't put them in the bin. It's not rocket science.

 

This attitude allows you to be honest with yourself about what music you really care about; also I know from experience how necessary it is to keep the collection manageable in Brooklyn - mine didn't turn into an overpowering monolith until I left NYC.

 

I have too many different performance of favorite classical works, e.g. at least 20 Brahms symphony cycles, dozens of Mahler's 2nd, etc. A good friend I met through the rec.music.classical.recordings newsgroup years ago was enviably efficient at culling his collection for very specific interpretation reasons. These CDs along with rock CDs where the vinyl wins easily is what I'll be selling/giving away, when and if I go down that road. There may be an awesome garage sale in LA at some p0int!

 

Welcome to the darkside.
Now, if we can just expand this into CD sucks, analog rules....which should be like shelling peas round these parts, we will have ourselves a real rinky dink dink discussion going !!

 

Back in college, I could sell just about any crummy cd in my collection and buy a steak burrito with sour cream (which is often did). Now, it would take selling 8-10 of the absolute best cd's in my collection to buy the same burrito. Kinda sucks.

 

I think you value your vinyl collection much more than your CDs. Sell them all while you can and while there are stores or collectors to buy them. Reinvest what you can get for them in vinyl. No more worries about bonus tracks or deluxe editions. You'll do it anyway, the sooner The better.

 

I think the window for receiving more than a dollar per CD in most cases has closed, at least in LA and SF. I spent many years buying and selling at Academy Records when I lived in New York, but the W. 18 St. store is selling more and more LPs, and Other Music is closing down. I still value large portions of my CD collection for things I don't own on vinyl, superior remasters, and sometimes even bonus tracks (e.g. the 2nd discs on the Elvis Costello Rhinos). That said, I think the standard for keeping or selling going forward will be whether with hindsight I would have bought the CD in the first place.

 

My idea is this. Pick a number of what you think is manageable and imagine you were on a desert island and choose what you would need up to the chosen number. It would be a good start. You could always add more to it.