what exactly do you mean? I'm imagining that you put them in a weighted bag and dropped them off a pier, or into a freshly poured concrete support on the M25.

As for me, I have a general clear out annually and put them in the attic, where they stay for a year or so. After that I have a rummage through and see if there is anything that I miss and it goes back on the shelf. Everything else I offer up to anyone who wants it, and the final dregs are divided between the local library and the charity shop.

On Sunday I got the urge to climb up into the roofspace to retrieve Robert Plant's 'Fate of Nations'. Listened to it, and marked it for the library.

While my cd's can fall into charity shops like rain, I can't for the life of me shed any 7" singles. In fact I bring them into the house at regular intervals, like a cat bringing dead mice to the hearth.
You can get anything, everything is out there. Sort of spoils it a bit for me.

here in this regular debate, between members of media who get review copies of cd's etc and punters who generally have to buy our own music.
When box sets wash up on your door step unbidden you probably have less attachment to them than if they represent x minutes/hours work.

I know journos do buy records but the thought that tommorow will bring 5 £free" new ones in the post must taint your view?

...sometimes I buy stuff cheap (often modern indie/metal albums which I have no interest in) to swap for stuff I do like, but I need to do another big clearout of my own collection. There are a lot of artists I collect most of their back catalogue though and they are in fairly regular rotation. However, I suspect a lot of the metal/hard rock I accumulated a few years ago I could really do without now as I haven't played a lot of it since.

I write reviews for a few progressive rock websites and received some promos via one of them a few weeks ago. That wouldn't stop me from buying CDs though because they are only from one genre. Most of the music I've bought recently have been soul/funk CDs, for example.

simply start a thread and have everone list what they have that they want rid of? Any takers for Robert Plant's 'Fate of Nations'?

Is vinyl okay stored in the loft? I must admit I worried about the extremes of temperature up there so have never relegated stuff upwards. I must admit I don't discard music that much. Books and films tend to have a short shelf life in our house though, unless I know I'll go back to them regularly or soon - which is not many. That's what the library and Lovefilm are for.

I own over 4000 compact discs – mostly albums and box sets. If I were to attempt to listen to them in chronological order, it is doubtful that I would leave the house until some point in late 2009.

The small part of my brain that devotes itself to sensible function tells me that I should get rid of some of these discs – maybe the ones that I don’t listen to anymore. Unfortunately a much larger and more dominant part of my brain – the region that tirelessly dedicates itself to foolish and impractical behaviour - tells me that, not only should I keep the existing collection, but that I should augment it with the new Brett Anderson album.

My problem lies in the fact that, while everything else has let me down at some point, music has remained a reliable source of pleasure and has inspired a misguided sense of loyalty. I’ve have always placed a disproportionate level of importance on it. I’m almost 35 but I’m trapped in an arrested adolescence where it is still normal for me to take the money that I should be using to buy food, and then blow it on compact discs. I will do it this month – I will overspend on CDs and then subsist on a diet of fish fingers, tinned spaghetti and toast.

The spoils of these sacrifices are piled-up in boxes that fill the shelves in my bedroom and which are now beginning to encroach on the floor space. One day my body will be discovered buried underneath an avalanche of CDs. A coroner will later conclude that my death came as a result of a blow from a Semisonic album that I hadn’t listened to in at least five years.

Much of my collection now exists in a purgatorial state where it is owned but not played. Will I ever again feel the need to hear Trot Out the Encores by Throneberry? I’m 99.9% sure that I won’t. Ask me to get rid of it and you might as well be asking me to shoot Bambi in the face - I can’t do it. Back it goes into box no.77, in between Therapy?’s - Opal Mantra single, and a compilation titled Prison Blues of the Deep South - two other that discs that have exceeded their shelf life in my collection, but which I would still fight tooth and nail for, if I ever discovered them in the clutches of an armed burglar.

Ironically the most moving piece of music I heard in recent years was by a group of women, circled around a tree outside a church in the Eritrean town on Mendefera. They were dressed blue and white robes, like popular Western depictions of the Virgin Mary. Their song was like a hymn, but with a linear structure. It sounded like it could go on forever. I sat down on a nearby wall, with my legs dangling over a sheer drop, and listened to them.

I can’t own this piece of music. It takes up no physical space. It lives on in my mind and I think about it from time to time. That’s where my true appreciation of music lies – not in these massed ranks of plastic jewel cases, containing libraries of songs that I no longer have the time or the inclination to listen to.

The only time I have ever culled my CD collection was when I was a student in Leeds and needed to eat. It was a dreadful experience, watching anxiously as the shop keeper mused over my CDs at the counter. Even more shocking when he uttered the words: "I'll give you £15 for that lot mate". I felt cheap and dirty, like a lady of the night. Later in the day I had a fuller stomach but felt worse than a murderer; I have never been on a culling mission since. Most of the CDs I culled, I bought back in later years (apart from The Toto albums). I have CDS in my collection which I never listen too, but will never cull again. I am a terrible hoarder. One day I may listen again to that Talking Heads Live album, U2's "Pop" and Oasis's "Be Here Now". Never say never, but never will I cull again.

I have begun to have a clear out over the last couple of months. It started a while back when I needed some space and moved some dross that I could not recall why or how I had ever bought it (yes Michael Bolton I mean you) into another room.

Since then I have done some selective weeding out of albums where I like the odd track, copying that track or two onto my laptop and turfing the CD onto the reject pile. This pile is gradually either being sold on ebay or donated to charity shops.

I thought this would bother me more than it has. In fact I have found it oddly therapeutic and in a way quite liberating to be able to admit to myself that I really don't like, for example, that Girl Called Eddy CD which I was somehow conned into buying by a good review in (cough) Mojo.

I think I have got to the point where I can admit bad buying errors and the fact that my taste in certain respects has moved on.

At its most voluminous, my record collection consisted of around 3000 CDs. Now, around 1000. And that's plenty.

I've given away hundreds, if not thousands of books and magazines. I hunt out people to give them to, "You want books? What type? I might be able to help."

Even DVD's get much the same treatment but I never give away cds unless it's something I have two copies of. I don't know what the difference is, they all cost me equally in time and money.

I think music creates a deeper imprint on me and is harder to shake. If I ever get asked "Do you ever listen to this stuff?" I always respond "No but I can."

I did the same thing last year. I took the view that for the vast majority of artists I really didn't need anything more than a decent compilation. So I sold loads of CDs on ebay.

Remember 7" singles? As a college Social Sec I managed to wangle my way onto many a weekly mailout of new releases which I hurriedly listened to and arranged into keep, get rid and deserves a further listen. Luckily in the latter pile I managed to rescue a promo copy of a certain Wuthering Heights once it moved up the charts. This record followed me from house to house, through thick and thin, never to be sold whatever the parlous financial state I was in.

Then along comes the perfect vehicle for painless culling and suitable financial reward, without the cost of an ad in Record Collector; Ebay. Do I miss the single now it has gone? Not a bit. Can't take it with you.

I had a cull when I moved house and had a big bookshelf built to house my CDs - it takes nearly 1200.

Sorry for gloopy picture! Can't imagine why I took it now, mid load.

Anyway, I'd had a few culls in the past to remove obvious idiot buying. But this time I discovered I still didn't have enough room. So I decided the physical space available is now the limit - when I run out of room, something has to go. So a sizable box of CDs went to the charity shop. And more will follow, once I start buying CDs again (I stopped 4 months ago on the basis that I wasn't listening to what I'd bought already, so I thought I would, before buying any more...and have discovered real gold there)

Anyway, eagle eyes, a point for each box set you can identify on the top shelf. 10 points for the one on the floor and 20 for the one on the third shelf. On yer marks......

The posts by backwards7 (beautiful piece of writing, by the way) and Diz really struck chords with me here - since I could not, absolutely could not cull ... until I realised that without creating some space, I would not be able to hoard more music.

So, like Diz, I looked to where my tastes had moved on, and it did surprise me - not so much that I hadn't listened to a particular CD for ages, but the dawning realisation that I didn't feel much inclination to listen to it again.

What's a bit worrying for me psychologically is that there's absolutely no pattern to it. I could never have a 'system' like Fraser.

I'm into jazz and in the early days of the Blue Note remasters (helped by pre-HMV Fopp) I collected up loads of artists ... but now realise I couldn't live without Lee Morgan or Art Blakey, yet can happily get rid of piles of Hank Mobley or Horace Silver. Why?

I also love a lot of metal, but what made me conclude that all the Metallica could go, but Maiden stays?

This means that all my culling decisions have felt very 'ad hoc' at the time (er, presumably that's by definition when things feel ad hoc) ... but I've not regretted any casualties yet.

... and have never regretted any cd I threw out.

...700 cds that I've bought. Maybe 50 or so that I never listen to but I'm keeping them all!!

I also have a couple of thousand bootleg cds from which I play half a dozen a year....and I'm keeping them all too!!

I don't collect boots any more and I don't buy nearly as many cds as I used to but these things are my musical life so I'm keeping them.

On a collectible note.....my father in law(jazz fan)was an engineer who worked with aeroplanes/car factories/railways and eventually in the prison service. He's over 80 years old and can still be found under cars or laying slabs. He has a garage/workshop that's almost the size of my house full of tools and spares that nobody will ever use again. Wing miror for a '65 Morris Minor? Element for one of these old Russell Hobbs kettles? Soldering iron the size of your thumbnail? He's got the lot.

I told him once to put it all on eBay as he'd make a fortune. Not a chance. He's keeping the lot and still gathering.

He said to me "When I'm heading feet first down Dorrater Road, *you* can deal with it".

nb..Dorrater Road is a one way street heading to our local cemetery.

'Jonathan Livingston Cdcull'

Funnily enough this weekend i attempted my first cull ever. Just moved in with my missus so felt a bit under peressure to lighten my load. I sorted out a box of about 30 cds, most of which have not been taken out of the case for years, to take to a local charity shop. When it came to actually leaving the house and taking them though i could not do it and they are now, alphabetically, back on my overloaded cd shelves

I've not really culled since I sold a load of vinyl to see me through a tight period and sincerely regret not having those early Metallica gatefold albums. I do chuck rubbish promos and magazine compilation CDs every so often though.

Mrs SPT can't complain - she embarked upon a cull a couple of years ago with a real determination to winnow the wheat from the chaff. In the end she threw out about 3 of many hundreds.

I've given away 15 years of back issues of Sight and Sound instead, which creates a few cubic feet of space that our forthcoming second child can fit in...

Wife spotted an article in the paper about music magpie - look up the site. Much better than having the humiliation of going into a secondhand record exchange and having them smirk at the inclusion of some long-forgotten Carter USM albums (shiver as it brings back the memories...).

Feels very theraputic having a purge. Makes you realise what you have that you'll never listen to and the feeling of finds some long lost gem is great!

God only knows how many CDs I have - a few thousand probably, but life's far too short to count them - but I can honestly that I've never thrown any away.

I know it's stupid, and there are undoubtedly numerous albums that I haven't listened to in years, and probably won't do for years to come, but I just cannot handle the idea of getting rid of them. There's no logical reason for holding on to them, and I know it's perfectly mad to be so attached to what is, really, a worthless piece of plastic that's helping to clutter up my house, but I hang on because of the teeny, tiny possibility that I'll want to hear something one day and I'll be glad I kept it.

I probably need help (my wife certainly thinks so). Anyone have a number for Hoarders Anonymous?

Got married in February and for some reason sold a third of my previously 1000 approx CD collection. I'd already ditched my vinyl ( and now really wish I hadn't ) some ten years ago.

I don't feel any pangs of regret. It's now quality over quantity i'm going for - although i have to admit, as owner of a web-blog of sorts, i do get on a few of the promo lists ( not many of the great ones, sadly! ) but haven't to date sold any 'promos' - i don't actually feel they are part of my collection, if that makes sense?

What's the legality by the way of keeping MP3s of albums you've sold on? I've also got a bunch of MP3 albums legally purchased from the likes of emusic and even DRMd Napster.
I find anything worthwhile I discover that way eventually winds up as a CD in my collection at some later date anyway!

http://www.adriandenning.co.uk/

Nothing wrong with fish fingers mate. When I first started dating my wife we had both come out of failed relationships and were a bit down on our luck. I invited her to my house for dinner one evening - not sure if she expected gourmet food or not but what she got was fish finger sandwiches!! It was her first experience of such a delicacy and has remained an occasional feature of our diet ever since. Far better to endure fish fingers and tinned spaghetti than give up your cd collection in part or whole. Today I was browsing through record Collector and saw Soft Cell - non stop erotic cabaret advertised - I had that somewhere in my collection and got an overwhelming urge to get it out and play it. I can't bloody find the sodding thing and fear I may have given it away. I know had i have played it I would have been underwhelmed but that isn't the point.

I've just sold 110 CDs on eBay for £200 (less about £30 in postage, PayPal and listing fees).

The wisdom I want to impart is this: don't bother unless you really need the cash.

Although I doubt I'll regret selling any of these CDs, I do feel it's probably better to just keep a hold of them just in case.

I realised too late after I sold them that I should have just binned the bulky jewel cases, and put the CDs in hardback plastic CD storage book. I could have also have kept the booklets together in a drawer. Maybe even keep the backing card as well so that I could make up a jewel case and return it to my main collection years later if I have second thoughts.