Windows shopphing: for an inveterate record shopper, the internet holds a new world of CD temptations. Alan Wagner discovers the thrill of the chase on the web.

I am not only an opera nut but a record collector, and thus dually obsessed.

Two closets and layers of shelves in five rooms are stuffed with recordings in every format, accumulated since my first 78rpm purchase in 1947. For me, recordings rank second only to live performances; they are more cogent than videos, which substitute a television-director's eye for my own memory or imagination. LPs were a boon, but their displacement by CDs promised easier storage and greater inventory, a fair trade-off for skimpier packaging. Unfortunately, idiosyncratic local record shops were soon engulfed by a tide of chain stores, where classical-music labels now fight for shelf ...