How do you organize your physical music collection?
 

A spinoff from a discussion on Urban's "100 things that piss me off..." thread.


I used to file everything alphabetically, but it was annoying to have Beatles albums, which I never listen to, cluttering up the top shelf, not to mention the embarrasing albums like the Joan Armatrading album a friend bought for me. So now I organize everything based on:
1. How much I like it
2. How often I listen to it

#2 is more important. I'm extremely lazy and don't feel like wading through the bottom shelf everytime I want to listen to XTC or X-Ray Spex, which is pretty often, so I just put those albums up on the top shelf. Problem solved.

It's also more interesting because I'm the only one who can find anything, unless someone else knows my tastes pretty well and can guess that Who's Next will be somewhere near the top while Live At Leeds will be somewhere closer to the floor.

i do pretty much the same thing
s',uch easier but it does mean you have to consciously challenge yourself to listen to newer stuff

Yeah i do the same thing, i don't have an enormous amount of CD's which helps. I have to have them all stacked though due to rapid loss of space, which is a bit crap.
While it is random they are ordered by artist though. It's an odd order but i'm quite particular about it, there's no reason for The Stooges being above Tom Waits but like hell i'm going to change it.

I have an enormous collection on my computer, and I once spent like an entire month organizing it alphabetically by artist.

...or you could just get itunes which does it anyway you want

My collection is alphabetical and within that each artist is arranged chronologically. Recently I decided to split out all my comps and soundtracks and arrange them alphabetically because I kept running into the problem of forgetting the names of them and having it take forever to go through my whole collection find them.

Heh. Yes, overall I'm pretty anal about how they're organized and my wife thinks it's hilarious.

i organize it alphabetically, then i organize each artist's releases chronologically.

In my ipod it's alphabetical by band/artist. If I have only one song from a particular band/artist it goes in the "Various" bin which is broken up into 3 sections "A-H", "I-P", "Q-Z" and is alphabetical by song. If I have 2 songs or more by a particular artist, they get their own play list.

I am currently in the process of digitising all my music (4000+ albums). The stuff that is on my comp/iPod etc are obviously sorted any way I choose, the beauty of a digital collection.

The rest, whilst it waits to be sorted lay in various boxes. Nobody will be believe me but I know which box any album is in when asked, lol.

if converting to MP3... make sure it's at a 320kbs rate. I wish somebody would have told me that 5 years ago :(

Doh!!

Yeah it is, anything less is pretty unacceptable.

Exactly, or even better, take it a step further and use a decent piece of software. :yeah:

As I stated before in Urban's thread, my collection is divided into two parts and kept separately from each other.

My CD and vinyl soul collection is arranged alphabetically, first according to label, then sub organised according to catalogue number.
And God have mercy on anyone that fucks with it.

I also have (for the Northern Soul comp CD's) a very weighty file binder (see pic below) organised in alphabetical order, according to song title > artist > CD title > CD catalogue number.
That way I can put my finger on any song much quicker than trying to remember which CD it's on.

http://i169.photobucket.com/albums/u...um/059-1-1.jpg


All other genres are arranged alphabetically by artist.

organize ?

:laughing:

http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l9...uly2007072.jpg

Urban...you're a disgrace!

I don't know how you people cope.

LOL!!! nice stack Urban.

I think that's part of the fun. The way the shelf order evolves and the way you have to really ask yourself if you still love a certain album as much as you used to.


That binder just blows my mind.


...and I wonder who dared to vote "Genre" after Urban's rant. :laughing:

Think yourself lucky it wasn't open at Hilary Duff! :p:

Loose genres. Very loose. Like, rock, harder rock, pop, classical, hip-hop, electronica, Teenage Fanclub.

Alphabetical by artists within genres.

Total Madness!

Does that make the file a lot bigger?

Yup, and takes longer to do as well. :banghead:

Thats exactly what I did with mine. Thankfully I started about 2 years ago so i'm almost done now.

I still have about 800 left to do but it's mostly stuff I don't really listen to. I think I can survive not having U2's Achtung Baby , Offspring's Smash & a Poison live album uploaded onto my hard drive.

My main prob is that I don't do it consistently. I have a weekend where I rip a lot and then I wont do it for a few weeks.

I did my whole collection about three years ago. Ever since then I try to rip CDs as I get them.

I have mine backed up on 3 HDs

You never know :D

I think we could be long lost brothers.

:beer:

When it comes to CD's...

I just have it, where...

Signed CD's are first, after that are the ones that I listen to the most, and then the ones that I have, that don't really get any play.


When it comes to MP3's...

Organized by Artist



I have to have it labeled perfect, in my way.
If it's not, I can't listen to it.

I have to have...

Song: Every Word Capitalized In The Title.
Artist: Singer ft. Guest


I can't have it say "Ft." "Feat." or "feat."

It has to say "ft."

Before mp3 etc and when my collection was smaller I did have a small cd rack that fit about 100 cds so my favourites and essentials went in there. This was called my 'house on fire' rack. Easy to pick up and run with.

That is disgraceful ;) Seriously though, if you pay money for CD'S why on earth would you have them scattered around getting scratched to buggery? I usually have a go at people if i'm visiting and their collection is being used as the carpet gggrrrrr

The worst thing about my computer dying on me was I lost my album list that I spent something like 9 years compiling.

I've spent nearly 5 months doing it again from scratch and i'm only up to M

I also have to do this. It's kind of funny when I'm over at my friend's house going through his music and he'll be like, "What are you doing?" "Oh, you didn't have the songs on Appetite For Destruction capitalized."

I always have a habit of leaving out the word 'the' when I use filenames so the album files all in alphabetical order. Yet when it comes to spanish or french bands I always leave it Los or La. I know they shouldn't be there but it just looks so wrong without.

I'm rubbish at this.

I don't have to do that. :)
Zune doesn't include "The" in the actual name, although it appears.

I don't own enough CDs for organisation to be a huge issue... so mine are simply from favourite to least favourite atm.

I buy most of my music on the iTunes store... so I don't really have many CDs. But if we are counting mp3's, I organize alphabetically.

Dunno what organisation is :p

And it totally sucks that sometimes I just feel like something totally different and it takes me an hour to find it... Then to not listen to it again for yonks :p

I want to order it (Genre) But I am just too lazy sometimes... Plus I know I will never to be able to keep it organised...

All digitalised music is in order by genre or Australian... Which is odd when you read jazz, metal, etc etc then Australian as if it were its own genre :p

I don't own any CDs or LPs, but on iTunes I sort after artist (who doesn't?).