The Undiscovered Country

As you can see, my new flat's main corridor linking the front and back is ideal for storing all my music, the question is...why have I still got all this stuff? Here I am banging away on an iBook with iTunes, just about to buy a back-up hard drive with enough gigs to store the British library on and yet...I still have these bits of plastic taking up my hallway.
Why?
1) what VCDH would refer to as metadata, and the rest of us humanoids would call 'the sleevenotes and cover art' - giving you two things:
i) the necessary facts to bore your friends with
ii) something to look at while you're listening - adding to the overall 'listening experience'
2) faith in physical objects as opposed to ones and zeros
3) they sound better
4) they look good in my hall
5) they prove that I like music OR have an irrational desire to spend all my disposable income on overpriced silver round things
So, how do I get round this? It's now a fact that in ten years time (well, probably more like two if things go at the present rate) we will no longer have these anachronistic piles of stuff cluttering our lives. Yet, it seems inevitable that we WILL have books. Books look cool, and they make chicks think that you're clever (joke). So why not music?
The mistake we make about music (and this applies especially to my generation - sigh, how I hate using that expression...) is that it no longer has the tribal affinities that once made it more exclusive and special. In turn this kinda takes away its ability to place you somewhere OTHER unless it's a club or a bedroom. The inner journey afforded by music is now coloured by life with all its hustle, bustle and product/media-related baggage. The very ubiquitousness of music is starting to make it more of a background colour that supports rather than features in your day. How many people these days will sit and listen to the EXCLUSION of all other activities? The fact is that most music is now only centre stage if it's literally that ie: live music. The iPod revolution, in making music easy to get hold of, also removes a layer of mystery.