Ever wanted to retrieve space on your shelves from all those old CD's? Try using Exact Audio Copy (EAC) to convert all your CD's to "flac" files (Lossless) then stream them to anywhere in the house with Logitech's Squeezebox family of products.
You can then store all those older CD's into your loft as hard backup for your copied files. I would highly suggest ensuring that your hard drive is mirrored though because ripping the CD's to hard drive takes ages and you really won't want to do that more than once....
If you also want MP3 versions of your music, I would highly recommend the "front end" for FLAC. It can convert FLAC to mp3 very easily.