file under: more sounds per hour

i have come to believe that there is now entirely too much recorded music in the world. despite being a somewhat dedicated fan of sound, i'm finding it impossible to keep up with the neverending influx of new, old, reissued, and re-formatted material that comes my way on the daily. THERE'S TOO MUCH OF IT and i don't know how to deal with that.

i mean, how do you scale back when scaling back is necessary? stay away from downloading, as tempting as that might be? ignore the emerging stuff until it gains a certain amount of critical momentum? reduce the amount of historical investigations? eliminate entire genres that are either over-represented in the collection or are only represented "to broaden the horizon"?

seriously, i'm not sure what to do. i hardly even have time to listen to the CD's we've bought over the last few months. at best, some of the older ones have been itunes-d and shuffled into my ipod's randomizer. that's okay for the most part, but i recall a time when it was possible to sit down and listen to something from the first track to the last. now everything's been exploded and atomized, hurtling out at speeds only a broadband line can capture.

not that i don't enjoy the rush of things coming at me faster faster faster; i definitely do. it's just distressing to find that i'm not even close to keeping up.