When a curator happens upon a new artist's ouevre, and is overcome with joy as a result, their collection will rapidly acquire the first three albums by the artist.

If the artist continues to produce new works over the following years, the number of titles from their canon of work which are subsequently added to the collection will decay in proportion to the inverse square of the number of years since the curator's original epiphany.

Thus an album issued 3 years after the artist's first appearance in the collection is nine times less likely to be added to the collection than the first album added.

Independent verification of this principle is most easily obtained by examination of a collection belonging to a fan of David Bowie.

The less well known "Dead Member" variation states that where a significant member of a band has expired, the effect is usually a rapid falling off of purchases, initially as an inverse cubic function, but eventually tending to zero.

These boundary condition effects are easily noted in collections belonging to devotees of The Grateful Dead, Little Feat, and so on.

The only known artists whose inclusion in collections is known to be free from any of these effects are Bob Dylan, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. The inclusion of works from these artists more usually follow the difficult "Too Important Not To Have The Lot" principle, often constrained only by the so-called "Cash Flow" limit.

I like the Afterglow effect... I have a Gallon Drunk album somewhere that I bought purely on the basis of hearing their cover version of The Bee Gees' To Love Somebody.

I've never listened to it again since the original purchase, more than 10 years ago.

I also give you the:
Missing Album syndrome

No matter how diligent you are at keeping track of all your CDs, and how anally you file them, there will always be one that you 'desperately' want to listen to, but has gone AWOL. And, for the life of you, you can't remember where it's gone - did you lend it to someone? Take it to a mate's house? One of the kids has nicked it?

Of course, if you buy a new copy, you can guarantee the original will turn up a day later!

The probability (E) of any collection (C) containing albums re-issued in a remastered format (M) is of the order:

E=MC2

If the number of albums in the collection by an Artist (A) is equal to (T-1) where T = the total number of available titles by that Artist, then E tends to infinity.

Hence, having only one more album to acquire by a given artist ensures that the artist's entire back catalogue will be reissued in remastered form within a week.

I always have to think very carefully before playing any Dylan as there is every chance that the result will be several weeks where only Dylan is on the stero. The last time this happened, I ended up knee-deep in botlegs and buying albums MTV Unplugged and playing Dylan on the ipod while reading Down The Highway.

cf the existence of an Aerosmith CD in your collection as that was the only other thing you could find in the special offers rack after you'd picked up 'Low' and 'Desire' and needed one more to get the twenty quid special offer.
Not to be confused with Tesco's Algorithm, whereby even once you've peeled the £3.99 sticker off the DVD, you still never get round to watching Music and Lyrics.

If there is a dumpbin, then I must search through it - in case there is something worth having at greatly reduced price.

A variation of this exists, If there is a charity shop with a CD shelf, then I must check the contents.

The "I always meant to get that" theorem - whereby you purchase an album you do not own but always meant to get when it is on sale for 2.99. And then you never actually play it.

The phenomenon whereby an acquaintance or semi-distant family member hands you a CD or DVD as a present with the phrase "I thought you might just like this..." and you can guarantee that it will remain in its cellophane shrink wrap in perpetuity BUT you are always that little bit guilty that you've never even opened it, let alone listened to it: cf Phil Collins "But Seriously...", Natasha Beddingfield "NB"

I remember a documentary about people with Asperger's, the wife of one was exasperated by her husband's latest arrangement of their large CD collection, in order of the date of birth of the composer.

My wife always puts the last CD on the machine into the nearest available CD box irrespective of whether its the correct box.

So if you are in the mood for a bit of Gene Clark, say. You open up the Gene Clark box and find daughter #2's Hannah Montana Cd. If you fancy a bit of Fela Kuti, its the boy's scratched copy of My Chemical Romance.

This drives me UP THE WALL.

My wife refuses to be moved by either my rage or logic that this is an incredibly annoying practice. "They all work their way back to their proper boxes in the end" she says.

I become more like Victor Meldrew by the day.

Oopsey doopsey ! I've just gone into a black hole by logging on. I was going to say that 'Pump' is quite a good Aerosmith album but i'd now like to sat that the 'botleg' answer was smart but 'spoddish' and the wife is clueless on song titles. Only this evening she said, "oh ! That's 'A Town Called Alice' by The Jam isn't it ?
Now, I don't know if Paul Weller read Neville Shute's account of Outback life when he was a teenager but I still felt an irrational annoyance. I think she does it deliberately. Can we have a section on the wife deliberately winding you up about music ? That might work.

Perhaps I'm being thick, but surely the whole point of the title of the Jam song was that it was a pun on the title of Shute's novel? Wasn't it?

...states that if you like the previously unknown support band at a gig and buy their latest album, you will hate it at first listen.

I've repeated this pattern many times over the years, but the most shocking examples go back a long way: "Marks" by Dutch band Alquin (support for Golden Earring at Newcastle Mayfair, mid-70s) and "The Piranhas" by The Piranhas (support for The Jam, Manchester Odeon, late 70s). Still own them mind... can't fathom this new-fangled "giving stuff away" trend.

There are occasional exceptions: I saw the Kings of Convenience supporting Eileen Rose at The Borderline a few years back and have loved them ever since. Oh, and I've just remembered that I first saw Gong supporting Faust at Newcastle City Hall a thousand years ago and currently own about 92 Gong-related albums. Not such a universal law then.