# You've been told to reduce your CD collection by 50%. Which ones will you get rid of?



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I will get rid of most of the old vocal music, like Gregorian chant.
I have too many Beethoven sets; I'll keep the Gardiner and the 70s Karajan, and the Paavo Jarvi SACD set;
Get rid of a lot of the other Beethoven.
Keep all my Glenn Gould.
Get rid of most opera except Schoenberg, Berg, and Strauss' Elektra. Keep one Wagner.
Cull through my American modernist stuff.
Get rid of a lot of Brahms and Mozart. 
Carefully go through all Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern.


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## Common Listener (Apr 6, 2019)

millionrainbows said:


> I have too many Beethoven sets; I'll keep the Gardiner and the 70s Karajan, and the Paavo Jarvi SACD set;
> Get rid of a lot of the other Beethoven.
> Get rid of a lot of Brahms and Mozart.


Send those to me. I've been told to expand my collection.


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## Oldhoosierdude (May 29, 2016)

I believe that it should be mandated we all have exactly the same amount of music.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

I'd bite the bullet and jettison all of my rock stuff as it accounts for only a fraction of my listening these days anyway. I've tried culling my classical collection on a couple of occasions, and in all I've managed to winkle out no more than about 40-50 recordings out of a collection which must now total somewhere between 2000-3000.


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## eljr (Aug 8, 2015)

millionrainbows said:


> You've been told to reduce your CD collection by 50%. Which ones will you get rid of?


The non classical titles less my Grateful Dead collection.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

I would get rid of the person making the demand.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

eljr said:


> The non classical titles less my Grateful Dead collection.


Another Deadhead on the boards?! :tiphat:


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## The3Bs (Apr 1, 2020)

I will pass 50 % of my collection to my wife... she has very few CD's so ....everything would remain under the same roof...


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

JAS said:


> I would get rid of the person making the demand.


And never speak to him/ her again.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Of course it could be done. Do I need every Bach cantata? Well, yes I do. But do I REALLY need it? Well, yes.

OK, but a dozen or so Mahler cycles? NO! Don't touch them!

However, as we move further and further away from my top composers, I could see some casualties.

Take Beethoven, if absolutely* necessary, I could live with reducing it to one CD of symphonies (5+6), two CDs of concertos (PC 3+4, VC), two CDs of the last string quartets and probably two CDs of piano sonatas, and that would still leave me with the Beethoven pieces I really like. That's 45 CDs less than what I have now of him.

For Wagner, I could limit the RING to the Solti cycle, keeping 14 CDs and losing 42 or so (I did not check whether they were 14 or 15 CD boxes). Keep my Tristan, Parsifal, Dutchman, Tannhauser and Lohengrin, and ditch the Meistersinger and the early operas.

For Haydn, I could live with reducing my CD collection to say two CD's with late symphonies, and four CD's with late string quartets - instead of the 72 I have now, which are pleasant to good, but not essential

And so on.... in general, I'd be more inclined to keep one or two CD's from most less famous composers for variety, and cut down on composers where I own a lot of CDs that I do not consider essential.


* I mis-typed the word, and the laptop wanted to correct it to absurdity. Even my laptop agrees that this is not a useful idea.


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

The scratched ones. I'm bad with CDs.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

ORigel said:


> The scratched ones. I'm bad with CDs.


You're one of the few. My experience with second-hand classical CD's is that they are almost always of excellent quality (in contrast to second-hand popular CD's).


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Works I have too many recordings of - the ones that are bettered than others and have no special additional insights. 

Quite a lot of 2nd and 3rd rate "neo-Romantic" and unmemorable 20th century music. 

I tend to purge non-classical fairly often (every 5 years) so there is not much there I would get rid of now.

The trouble is that so long as I could afford it I would fill the gaps on my shelves within a year!


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I really was talking about classical,

...but _while we're on the subject, _while we're on the subject, _while we're on the subject_ how's the old wazoo?

I have a lot of remasters, so all the old ones could go. This means entire catalogues: The Beatles, The Doors, King Crimson, Free, Allman Brothers, Frank Zappa, Eno, Talking Heads, Robert Palmer, John Cale, Velvet Underground, Donovan, and more.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

If I am going to go through my collection to answer this thread, then I may as well get rid of stuff. Of the top of my head I can think that I don't need about 4 dozen Beethoven Ninths, most of my Cecilia Bartoli, and tons of other stuff. The biggest road block is the idea that I paid so much for this stuff and won't get 20% of it back on sale unless I do it on Amazon/Ebay which is a lot of work. Mass dump at the brick and mortar record store is easiest and will at least get it over with quickly.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

I'm not getting rid of anything. Go suck an egg.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Rogerx said:


> And never speak to him/ her again.


Except, perhaps, in terms of abuse.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

I've thought about this - and 50% would be great to keep, but really it's going to be less than that at some point I guess.

First: no more duplicates. Only one set of symphonies by Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovksy, Sibelius usw. May have to have a few Mahlers. I don't need two dozen Scheherazades, five Rings...

Second: All the "junk" goes. As a curiosity seeker in the forgotten byways of music history, I've collected a lot of crap, as another thread puts it. It was interesting, and fun, but no need to keep. Bye Bendix, Jadassohn, Draeseke, Klughardt and their ilk.

Third: Anything I really don't like. Frankly, there's a lot of great music that just doesn't do a thing for me and that includes music by Debussy, Mozart, Stravinksy, R Strauss, Chopin, Bartok and many others.

Fourth: Badly recorded music. Not everything in the past 40 years was all that well done technologically, but here I mean anything pre-stereo is going. Some horrid sounding early digital recordings are out.

Fifth: Badly played. There's more of this than there should be. A Mahler set from Bulgaria. More than a few Marco Polo disks where you wonder if they ever looked at the music before hitting the REC button.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Just the ones I am highly likely never to play again.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

I have a finite amount of space, so I fairly regularly cull cds. For short-term interests and ephemera, I'm often satisfied with streaming. However, since space is the main issue, that sometimes means replacing a few commodious, shelf-hogging cds with a nice, sleek, and efficient box set.


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## neofite (Feb 19, 2017)

I gave almost all of them away years ago to needy friends to encourage them to learn more about good music.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

JAS said:


> Except, perhaps, in terms of abuse.


Never abuse, not even verbal.....


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## Haydn man (Jan 25, 2014)

Yes I could get rid of 50% of my CDs because it is all on a hard drive, the only trouble is if memory serves me correctly if I get rid of the physical CD then I should not keep the downloaded copy I have made.
So really the answer is no


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