THERE'S A CHANGE A COMIN'

I buy CDs – lots of them.

I own CDs – thousands.
BUT – I no longer listen to CDs. My entire “listening experience” is now digital. I have the Brennan JB7 in the living room that is my main music system and I have an MP3 player that follows me around almost everywhere (except running).
In fact, nowadays I will get a CD home and take it out of the case once and once only. I will “rip” it on my PC (for my MP3 player) and will then transfer those files to my Brennan via a USB data stick.

Is it really worth while cluttering up the house with CDs, which will probably never be used in the way they were intended? CDs are, for me now, simply the physical medium of transporting the music from shop to home.
I am at a bit of a loss right now over whether or not I should get rid of some [or all] of my CDs.
It doesn’t make “rational” or “logical” sense to hang on to them once ripped, but then again, when was collecting ever “rational” or “logical”.
If music exists on my PC, and it’s backed up to an external hard drive, and it’s stored on my Brennan (which in itself is really just another external hard drive) isn’t that “secure” enough?
It should be, but I really get quite worried about the thought of getting rid of tangible “things”. “Things” that you can handle and touch . “Things” that have physical presence and are not simply collections of 1’s and 0’s in a file structure.
Problem with these "things" though is the bloody space they take up. A real problem when you have a "modest" house.
One thing I would want to do though is re-rip some of my CDs. Most are ripped at 192kbps at the moment – perfectly fine for listening to (at the moment), BUT I would probably want to upgrade to 320 before I got rid of them (that way you can always convert down for MP3 use, but still have CD quality).
Not to mention the art work. I know you get “album art” in MP3 ID tags, but it’s not the same. Probably the same argument as happened when vinyl gave way to CDs – the loss of 12” art work for 5” booklets. But now to lose 5” art for what in essence is a bloody thumbnail icon?? It doesn’t feel right.
Should I buy MP3 downloads? Probably fine for “throw away” culture like “pop” music. But I don’t want to be “into” music for a brief while – I want to build a collection.
If I do get rid of my CDs there’s the big question of what to do with them (and to be honest, it’s unlikely). I wouldn’t want to sell them for the simple reason that it’s unlikely that anyone would want to take them all off my hands and I wouldn’t want the collection to be split up.
I certainly wouldn’t want to donate them to a charity shop as I wouldn’t want some salivating, greedy little tyke rummaging through them (someone like me).
I’ve even thought about air tight storage boxes (metal) and simply storing them somewhere. I suppose that even with the MP3s “backed up” in one or two places the CD is still the ultimate back-up. I could probably find space for a couple of crates/boxes out of the way somewhere.
I really don’t know what’s going to happen. I started with vinyl (as we all did) as a youngster, then I had a brief “flirtation” with cassette tapes, then had a shift to CDs that’s stayed with me for twenty odd years. But I just feel that there’s a change a comin’.


Oh. And I still enjoy buying them.