I know the standing-at-the-shelf feeling well. I'm generally conflicted on this whole thing.
I have a young son (he'll be seven soon) who was a fairly light sleeper as an infant/toddler. So for a long time, I really was only able to listen to music while commuting to and from the office. MP3s made that experience much better, as it meant I could access a greater variety of music while out. So at a certain point, it made less sense for me to buy CDs, since I rarely had a chance to listen to them. And CDs take up too much space. And cost more.
For a few years, I had all my CDs in drawers, as I didn't have enough shelves to accommodate them. But last summer I finally got some new shelves. So recently, I've been able to listen to more music at home, and have been simply standing at the shelves, looking through the discs. This kind of library-browsing experience is lost in the convenience of computer files. It's the same thing lost in the transition to buying books on Amazon. Amazon has a better selection than any bookstore could possibly have, but I love standing in front of the stacks, discovering new books I might not have otherwise, or getting something on a whim simply because the book jacket looks great.
And I find it funny that based on my CD collection alone, one would imagine that I haven't listened to anything made in the last seven years, when the truth is quite the opposite.
Again, I'm conflicted. CDs as media make no sense to me, since they're just a plastic delivery method of content more easily accessed online. But the music as object/book/item quality of the CD is something I miss.
