This sounds familiar although I am very careful to buy the cds I want at the best price around.

I am trying to restrict myself to 2 to 3 albums per month.

It may help me curb my appetite for new music when I occasionally buy on recommendation without checking Spotify or similar first....

I listed Neutral Milk Hotel's - Aeroplane Over The Sea cd on eBay within an hour of buying it at my local haunt Action Records... Not my idea of a great album at all... the only thing I liked about it was the artwork!

Artwork alone has never been a good enough reason to keep an album in my collection.

My 'solution' is to restrict myself to back-catalogue albums on Amazon - and nothing over £5-£6. So far I have resisted new albums by The Decemberists and Iron and Wine - as particular examples. The new Ron Sexsmith will be a big test of my system however. In addition, I have picked up some great bargains on old albums by Tangerine Dream, David Sylvian, The Mahavishnu Orchestra, Fripp and Eno, Biosphere, Global Communication, Japan ....

... It's not working ... is it?

...that it could be like when I was a teenager and music was all new and my collection was small. I would sometimes have to play records until I liked them! (e.g. John Martyn's 'Inside Out' which I had to play for 3 weeks before I got it.) I would hear records at a friend's house and if I really liked something, I might tape it. The library was a source of inspiration and, of course, I listened to the radio a hell of a lot more than I do now.

As for today, well I've just downloaded a new Fleet Foxes track. I'm bombarded with opportunities to listen to new stuff. A friend has just sent me a CD with 10 albums worth of mp3 files on it, but I've only had the opportunity to listen to a tiny fraction of it so far. I haven't had time to listen to the last two Word cover mount CDs. Even though I have bought fewer CDs lately, only a few of them immediately hit the spot and get listened to more than once or twice.

I don't think I'm an addict, but I'm so time poor that it is a rare piece of music that becomes a soundtrack to my life. Being bombarded by music is not unlike being bombarded with any other information. E-mails to my computer and to my BlackBerry. News to my desktop. There's so much that I can only skim the surface of everything!

For that reason, I yearn for holidays and long journeys when I can listen to whole Miles Davis albums and read long books without interruption. I know I'm not alone.

The only albums I've got in the last few moths are freebies. I realised that I was buying for the sake of it and not listening to or enjoying what I bought. I'm hardly listening to music at all at present, just the odd disc here and there.
I've been hooked on music since a was a small child but I forgot how to enjoy it, so I'm having a breather and hoping to rediscover the pleasure of sticking a disc or a record on, sitting back and listening.
I'm actually happy to have reached this stage. I wish I'd got here a few years ago - I'd have a lot more dosh than I do now.

the crap you want to ditch ....no shop wants

so you end up giving it away ....see above

or just throwing it out....Why throw it out unless space is a premium-and if that is the case see a separate thread on storage options

or is it the guilts from having bought all this stuff... delayed post purchase dissonance ?

another option , one that I use is to go through the collection and select a current playlist of 20 or so albums that are positioned prominently so I see em and play em.

a further suggestion is multiple sound systems. I have 4 of them from the premium sound system to retro stuff I've held onto or got cheap, to a ghetto blaster. You are more likely to play stuff if cds and player are near to hand

on iTunes is used as a holding pen for all the new stuff and is synced with the iPod so all recent purchases stay on rotation for at least a month.

I suppose the difference with me is I'm quite happy "owning" certain things on mp3 only. The fact that buying a new record doesn't necessarily equate to a new bit of plastic occupying shelf space is liberating and means I take a punt on things I might otherwise have missed (and it's cheaper).

I'll still check the new releases at my local Indie shop and get something from them on CD every other week or so but only if it's something exceptionally good or quite often they have an edition which has an extra disc or whatever that isn't available online.

I spent yesterday evening typing my credit card number into mflow to make the most of 20 hours of 20p tracks. I downloaded about 12 albums in all. Some to replace vinyl or tapes, some to listen to and some to just be there if I want them. I don't have a problem with this.
Most of my 90 Emusic downloads last month were old albums that I may never listen to all the way through but any and all the tracks are available to put onto Sonos playlists.
It probably means I'm an addict too but it's only a problem if I buy music instead of food, which I don't.
I don't know what I'm going to listen to on my ipod today, let alone next week so I don't see any need to cull the collection or stop buying.

...Sometimes I’ll connect with what I’ve bought and end up listening to it a lot; on other occasions not so much. It might not be that the album is bad, but simply that I heard it at the wrong time in my life.

Once I have the record in my collection I can revisit it whenever I want. I owned Van Morrison's Astral Weeks for 10 years before I really came to appreciate it. More recently Matinee by Sharkboy has taken up semi-permanent residence next to my hi-fi and gets played regularly. Who would have thought that an album that I listened to sporadically 16 or 17 years ago, would suddenly strike a chord and become a firm favourite? There’s the potential for any album in my collection to experience a similar revival. That’s not overwhelming – that’s exciting.

I'm not going to impose denial or a sense of duty on something that I associate with pleasure. It makes listening to music too much like jogging or forcing yourself through 50 press ups everyday. Why should I forgo listening to the album that I really want to hear because there's another album that I haven’t listened to the required number of times. Life's too short. When I buy a new record, as I probably will later today, I’m extending the range of music that I can listen to as the mood takes me.

Mr Sparks' remark about wishing he could go back to a time when his collection was small gave me an idea for an experiment.
I spent an hour separating all the stuff I owned up to the end of 1980 (I only started in early 79) and I am going to treat these few miserable tunes as my collection for a while.
There's some rubbish in there I never play now (especially from my flirtation with the NWOBHM). But surpisingly, given the dearth of black artists and lack of old stuff (everything I bought between Jan 79 and Dec 80 was from that period except for the Bee Gees Greatest Hits), there is a nice variety to what's before me:
albums by Bowie, Rainbow, The Buggles, Dexys, ELO and Adam & The Ants; singles by OMD, The Jam, Elvs Costello, Sister Sledge and Gary Numan.
For those proper sit-down-and-listen times these will be my records and I will spin Scary Monsters before moving on to "discovering" Ziggy as happened at the time. I will soak up Searching For The Young Soul Rebels until I'm looking forward to Too Rye Ay (who knows I may even tease myself with a single first before allowing myself to hear the album).
And then on to 81, 82 and so on. Of course it will be impossible to be entirely accurate about when I bought back catalogue stuff but a lot of things will be easy to place because I remember in which shop they were bought. And then there are the logical chains (Power, Corruption and Lies begets Closer which suggests Love Bites...)

While this experiment excites me and must therefore be attempted, I find I agree entirely with backwards7 as well.
Imposed denial is likely to be a chore. While I am determined to stick as much as possible to my 79/80 playlist for proper sitting down attention, I have no intention of closing my ears to new music from the radio or even this site. (Funnily enough, my favourite song so far this year is I Party All The Time by Gang oF Four. In fact I suspect its "If 2010s were 1980s" quality is what opened my wormhole allowing me back).
And I won't forgo listening to anything I have a craving for. In fact I think it's only by keeping things loose the experiment has any chance of lasting.
This may be crazy. Time Will Tell

This is getting out of hand.

Was gifted stacks of music by mrs toro for Christmas (bless her).

Then I paid a visit to HMV and actually found quite a bit of stuff in the sale and 2 for £10 etc (including volumes 1 - 8 of Motown Chartbusters and a 4CD set of Northern Soul classics).

Then I read the mflow thread over Christmas and hammered the credit card - lots of old stuff, some newer but at 20p a track its all very tempting.

Then on the same thread I read about Amazon having over 1,000 free tracks available for download over Christmas - promptly went and downloaded about 350 of them.

Then I came down to London for the Massive meet - a sortie to Fopp saw some more purchasing.

Then I went to see Richard Thompson on Saturday at warwick Arts Centre - had to visit the music store in there too.

Then on Sunday I revisited mflow again to exploit the 20 hour 20p offer.

Apart from the initial mflow stuff and the Amazon freebies which have made it onto my new 160 gig ipod (another Xmas gift - the previous 160 gig one was full), everything else is currently languishing on a hard drive or the ever growing pile of CD's awaiting me getting off my arse and buying some more shelves.

Like one or two above, I'm not sure I've been enjoying music as much as I used to when there wasn't that much around and I couldn't afford it anyway. Now, I'm loathe to spend too much time on one album because I know there are hundreds all needing the same attention.

Having said that, in December I went through a spell where for about 2 weeks I only listened to the Ben Harper and Relentless 7 album in the car. Got to know every note on every track, just like I did in the old days on all those 70's albums that I can tune straight into if and when I ever play them - every note, every yelp or vocal tic. Like riding a bike.

Will I ever get like that with my current collection? I doubt it. Even if I never bought another album it would take me years to listen to them all "properly". And I'm not going to avoid buying any more am I?

As with backwards, I'm not getting rid of anything. The thrill when something new and different and virtually unheard pops up on random play is tangible.

I am el toro and I, too, am an addict.

I think the back catalog is complete & I can just but the new stuff as it comes out I discover someone else. Bettye Lavette, Jim Russell, Peter Case & Jim Ford have now been collected & collated. Who's next I wonder?

I have this problem too, but for me it's about the music rather than the packaging, so I sell everything I buy. I own 2 CDs, Scooter's 'Encore' and Sash's 'S4' which for some reason are copy protected and won't import to iTunes.

In my spare time I'm a London-based eBay Trading Assistant (ie I sell your stuff for a small commission), so if you would like to reduce some clutter, make some extra cash but don't want to do it yourself, feel free to contact me on the private message thingy.

I've just started buying Northern Soul singles. Always been a lover of soul, especially the mid tempo stuff, but through the usual CD compilations by Kent and Motown and the like. Last year I happened along to an event and purchased a copy of a Contours single. When I got it home and played it, boom. I was 15 again.

I now buy online (only British reprints, nothing too expensive, £3-10 each) probably 5-10 singles a month, and am seriously considering buying some decks and putting a night on. It's all part of the oooohhh-look-at-me-and-my-impeccable-music-taste thing we all have going on.

So, my name is Mark, and I am an addict. Thank you.

I'm quite drawn to the 100 CDs idea.
The confusion of modern life would be eased considerably with such an ordered collection.
Though I love The Fabs, Stones etc. I think that my 100 would pretty much exclusively be rock 'n' roll and just straight no-nonsense issues, for example, of Buddy's two LPs and those wonderful singles compilations on Ace by The Everlys, Little Richard and Fats Domino.

What would John Major say?
'Back to basics', I guess.