i have some of mine alphabetized but have many of them categorized to genres of music which isnt always neccesarily correct.

here are some of my categories

alt country- steve earle , lucinda williams, robbie fulks, joe ely , ryan adams wilco would all be lumped together.

powerpop- squeeze , the cars xtc cheap trick lumped together and then countless other bands who kind of fall into that genre

then nick lowe and anything that relates to him dave edmunds rockpile which overlaps to graham parker n elvis costello.


springsteen and then preety much anybody else who is related to spingsteen musically. which includes preety much anybody else who has been in his band or played with him or has the jeresey kind of sound.

i just recently had everthing all alphabatized and felt i should have just left it that way but its interesting how many sub divisions of music there is .

i have at least 50 different categories i realized

Categorizing music, like matchmaking, is best left to professionals and little old ladies.

Alphabetise regardless of genre, followed by soundtracks with compilations at the end.
It's the only way, what would you do genre-wise if you had the first and last Mekons albums?

Organize? I remember when they used to be organized. Then they were alphabetical by artist, then chronological. But that was years ago. Now they subsist in towering, structurally unsound piles wherever there's room to put them.

towering piles? you too?

Mine are currently piled in a closet not unlike Mr. Whoopee's on TENNESSEE TUXEDO. (Or I guess like the Great Guildersleeve's, for all you old time radio aficianados out there. Which is probably no more obscure a reference than Tennessee Tuxedo, now that I think about it.)

Once upon a time I kept them alphabetical, but that was a pain with CDs. It wasn't so bad with albums, since you could always shove one more album onto a full shelf, but with CDs, once the shelf is full, you have to begin moving things to the next shelf to fit new stuff on, and so adding just one additional CD into the mix became a nightmare.

Or Fibber McGee and Molly's closet, right? I have them in really nice CD cabinets -- two of them -- that I bought from Service Merchandise when they existed. Up until about 10 years ago, I bought dozens of CD's at a time and they filled up quickly. After grad school, that ended and I might buy 3-4 a year, downloading the rest from iTunes and eMusic. We're considering downloading all our CD's onto our gigantor hard drive and putting them in the closet, so we have the room, but that might require work of some sort, so it's not likely. Anyone following the Onion AV Club guy's decision to stop listening to music and give away/trash/sell all his CD's in order to help him start liking music again (job boredom)?

Man, I over use the comma. I just love that darned thing.



Post Edited (02-05-08 12:33)

I keep my CDs in alpha order. I have thousands, so putting a new CD in is indeed a Herculean task. I tend to wait until I have a dozen or so new ones before I start the labor. I find that doing it this way is a good way to cull my collection of disks I really don't want to keep forever after all, especially those whose names might being with the same letter as the name of the artist I'm trying to shelve.

Soundtracks, tribute albums and "various artists" compilations each have their own separate shelves.

Steaming. But I couldn't have as many as you, Ira.

We are talking about CDs, right?



Post Edited (02-05-08 09:44)

CDs, yes. the vinyl is all neatly shelved. most of the CDs are in Can-Am drawers. the stacks are the overflow.

Half of my collection are in CD books. The other half sits on shelves in my living room. I regret throwing out the CD cases in order for them to fit in my books. But when I move, they'll be more portable.

Mine are organized thusly:

Rock/pop/soul/whatever, all alphabetical by artist
Compilations and soundtracks, alphabetical by title
Jazz, alphabetical by artist
Classical, alphabetical by composer

Yes - Fibber McGee. Got my old radio confused.

Organization is Process.

My process:

1. Convert all media (records, CDs, DVDs, ...) to lossless digital format (currently FLAC files).

Note that I don't use lossy formats like MP3. I want maximum audio quality and can afford the extra storage. I don't use portable players that require compressed files due to their limited storage capacity. But if you use MP3, AAC, or other lossy formats my system works equally well.

2. (Optional) Scan album images (cover, disc, insert, etc.) to digital format (jpeg/png/tiff/pdf, ...).

3. Store files in a directory structure using the following organization scheme:

1st directory level: /audio
2nd directory level: A - Z (1st letter of artist/title/composer name) PLUS "Various Artists"
3rd directory level: As described by Delvin above
4th directory level: Album title...contains all audio, text and image files for the album

4. A complete duplicate ("mirror") of this hierarchy will exist on a minimum of two separate hard drives, preferably in two separate machines. The mirroring of files will be accomplished automatically using either software (scheduled shell script) or hardware designed for this purpose.

This step protects your investment of time. Hard drives will fail, as will power supplies. There is safety in numbers. More copies = more likelihood your data will survive.

5. Original media (records, CDs, DVDs) are organized as described by Delvin and are stored in large boxes in a suitable storage room.

This step provides additional insurance against hardware/software failure and protects the media from loss of value should it become collectable. It also provides durable proof of ownership should you need it.

There you go.

Well my CD's are all alphabetical I'm afraid, However, I have, by necessity, have moved all my my music to the computer and listening to music in MP3 form. I now have over 21,000 songs on my computer.

I have been struggling with this as I still want to have the album listening experience but finding albums that I want to listen too amongst a sea of so many songs was a struggle. I used to peruse my CD shelves looking for inspiration for what I was in the mood to listen to. Staring at a computer screen is more difficult. I tended to just listen to the same stuff over and over again as it was just easier to find but I missed the experience of rediscovering forgotten gems.

I have now created playlists by genre and sorted my tracks and albums into these to make finding the individual albums easier. Now I pick the style of music I was to listen to and can search for albums in that style. I went through several configurations but here is the grouping that seems to work the best:

50s r&b (really anything pre-motown and pre-stax up to about 1962)
50s rock and roll (essentially pre-beatles)
r&b 62-68
Mid-60's Rock (British Invasion and Nuggets era)
r&b 68-75
Late 60s Rock (Post Sgt Pepper until about 1972)
70s Classic Rock (from 72-80)
r&b 75-80
Pub Rock and Power Pop
80s and 90s Classic Rock
80s and 90s r&b
New Wave
Punk and Post Punk (pre-Nevermind alternative essentially)
Alternative (from Nevermind to current)
Alt-Country
Current Tracks (the odd mainstream track that catches my fancy)

I still struggle with the odd album that is hard to quantify but I have found this makes my transition to the digital medium much easier.

When you have 20,000+ unique items it is time to use a database. Unfortunately, most people are unfamiliar with databases, and current databases aren't trivially easy to use, nor are they ubiquitous. ID3 tags in audio files are a nice step towards providing a standard way of categorizing music, but are limited and the computer file systems don't do enough to support organization of the files based on the data in the tags.

I predict this will change as more people start to amass large numbers of files. This is a problem I've been dealing with for a very long time. As a result I have created my own methods for doing these tasks with a minimum investment of time and effort. Eventually most of this work will be done automatically by the operating system.

Hmmm. While I concede that your way is much superior, I have to admit that, knowing myself as well as I do, opening the closet door and tossing the CD in and slamming the door before the avalanche works much better for me.

All the single artist EPs and full lengths are on the first floor living room, in a huge set of shelves under my stairwell, alphabetical by band name or last name of artist.

All the multi-artist compilations and soundtracks are upstairs in the bedroom, alphabetized by title.

All the singles are also upstairs, alphabetized by band name or last name of artist.

STEVE has an excellent point. We're expecting a baby in June and the thought has occurred to me that my CD collection will be.... vulnerable.

You know, I was worried about that as well, but both of my kids never were really interested in my cds. The bookcase, however, was a different story. Pages are a lot more fun to tear than pulling a cd case out.

Well, at least my kid found CDs plenty worth yanking down from the shelf. We had to move everything up a few feet and block off access to the ones that couldn't be moved.

Organize? ORGANIZE?!? BWAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Actually i did make an attempt at organizing my CDs in somewhat alphabetical order back in the early 00s (storing them in those plastic crates you get from Costco). Alas, I haven't been as diligent in my organization efforts in recent years and with more recent CDs.

Beyond the reach of a two year old.

The easiest way for me to organize my CDs is by genres:

Case 1: pop punk, old school punk, 50s rockabilly, 60s pop

Case 2: ska, 70s rock, surf, various soundtracks and compliations