I’ve always wondered for those who are true musicphiles, how do you organize your collection?
Genre & sub genre and then Alphabetically.
Alphabetical by artist?
By Artist/order of album release?
some other way?
Genre*
Then Alpha by Artist
Then Chrono by Album
Compilations are at the end, organized by Alpha
The exceptions are Classical, which are organized by Composer and then type of music (syphonies together, concertos together, etc.) and Soundtracks, which are organized by Alpha (film title)
*For me, Rock/Country/Pop/etc. are all one genre. I separate Jazz (but don’t draw distinctions between vocal and instrumental).
I purposely don’t organize my music. I used to keep everything in alphabetical order, but one day I took down all my CDs off the shelves, mixed them up on my bed and drew from the heap with my eyes closed. I just couldn’t stand knowing exactly where each album was - I’d get locked into seeing the same things all of the time. With my CDs arranged in random order, there’s a bit of a “thrill of the hunt.” Plus, I stumble across CDs that I might decide I want to play more.
As for vinyl, it’s arranged in the order I last listened to it - most recent listens in the front of the box.
Same as Archive Guy except for genre. Everything’s by alpha/chrono.
Good question, Shirley.(Congrats, BTW, on your Pit thread) I’ve got about 3000 CD’s, most freebies due to a previous music biz incarnation.
They are arranged by genre, and alphabetically within. About 100 are hovering around the current listen bin, which has no damn order whatsoever. Hopefully, the CD fairy will collect them and put them back in proper order, someday.
The 1000 LPs are alphabetically arranged, and tend to collect dust lately, with 20 or so enthusiastically dug-out gems hovering around the turntable, which really needs a new, hard-to-find, needle cartridge.
Another 100 CD’s sit in no order at work, where we play em for atmosphere. Current rotation there: Louis Armstrong, Mississippi Sheiks, Carter Family, Billie Holliday, Professor Longhair, Thelonius Monk, Coleman Hawkins,Kitty Wells, Etta James…
About 50 overflow CD’s between work & home in the car—no order.
Sheesh, my life is a trail of music, twould seem. Blessed be…
I only have about six or seven hundred CDs, so I don’t need a real complex categorization system. I have a pile of about 150 CDs on top of my CD player; these are the ones that I’m playing most often at whatever point in time.
On my main CD rack, the top shelf holds the CDs that won’t fit well elsewhere due to packaging (either oversize packaging, or CDs that came without jewel cases and would end up getting lost elsewhere).
My binaural CDs get stuck on the bottom shelf off to the side–I don’t currently have a headphone amp, so I don’t listen to them these days.
My other CDs are divided between two CD racks, one each for CDs I tend to play more often vs. less often. I’m way too lazy to organize them further than that, and I prefer to stumble across CDs as I browse the racks.
Alphabetically by artist, then chronologically. Genre has lost nearly all it’s usefulness to me anymore.
But the CDs have given way to iTunes, which makes organization s o o o o o o much easier.
Alphabetically by artist, then by album.
ArchiveGuy, you are better organized than I am! For interest’s sake, though, I have Country separated into Old Time (pre 40’s),Nashville (40’s-70’s), Texas country,and Alt-Country. Have a separate Louisiana/Cajun/Zydeco/NOLA section. Then a whole Tex-Mex section.
Very blues heavy, and separated alphabetically, then compilations, by label and time-frame; ie; Old Time, Jump Blues, Chicago, Memphis, current Mississippi.
A whole other Gospel category; Old time, modern, etc.
I’m making myself dizzy here. Oh well, the music is worth it!
I have a multi table relational database for keeping track of my 2,000+ collection of mostly CD’s and vinyl. Every new CD gets a 5-digit number (in sequential order) and is then entered into the separate tables for CD data, performer data, and songs (this works equally well for classical). I have been doing this now for about 7 or 8 years and it is a great way of tracking my music collection.
I should have included that the CD table includes name of performer, genre, record label and number, title, number of selections; the performer table includes which tracks a performer appears, and the songs table includes when recorded, songwriter(s) and song titles. All of these are linked by the 5-digit code number.
Good Golly,Waterman, :eek: :eek: :eek:
What can I say, it’s what happens when obsessive-compulsive meets late in life computer geekdom! 
I have well over 5,000 CDs. All are arranged alphabetically by artist name, and then each album by an artist is in chronological order from left to right. No genre divisions.
Oh, except Frank Zappa has his own section. But then, he’s Frank Zappa.
Are you talking about the physical storage or the electronic storage?
If the former then if I may point out, the advantage to my system is that I just stick them at the end of the CD rack as I get them and I don’t have to worry about having to insert a new CD in the middle of a shelf and then potentially adjust each succeeding shelf.
If the latter it doesn’t matter as I can my database by any field or combination of fields that I want!
No, the physical storage is alphabetical by artist, album by chronology.
I build my own shelves and I plan for the future. The first shelf unit I built holds about 2,000 CDs. Yeah, it filled up eventually. I just built another one and moved 'em. I think it took me about 3 years to fill that one up, and prolly another 2 to fill up the second one I built, etc… Not that big a deal to me to have to go through all my CDs every now and again. It’s just an excuse to listen to stuff I haven’t heard in a while. 
I think it’s cool to go “ooooh yeah! I forgot I had that!”
I keep a database organized the same way in case something goes missing, but that doesn’t happen often. It’s mostly in case there’s a fire or a terrorist attack on my house or something.
I don’t really need much labeling, etc. I would estimate I know the year of release, band members, song titles and order for about 90-95% of my collection. I just have that kind of sick mind :eek:
Now, my 600 or so DVDs are done by genre, with almost no other order at all. I mean, the Jackie Chan movies are all together in the Hong Kong section, the Simpson’s DVDs are all together in the cartoons section, etc. but that’s about it.
Alphabetical by artist. I don’t generally sort the albums within an artist.
Solo and side projects are generally filed with their predominant band until they’ve amassed about three discs on their own. So Mike Gordon, with two solo/side efforts, is still filed with Phish, but Trey Anastasio has four, so he has his own place now.
Alphabetically by artist. I once had all of my cassettes and half of my LPs in a flat file database but the file got corrupted. 
Musicals fan checking in. I have a collage of plastic crates against one wall, one crate for each show. I don’t have to keep them in any particular order. And Julian Lloyd Webber and ABBA have their own boxes cause I have so many of them.
On the opposite wall are two bookcases arranged alphabetically by artist, but in no particular order.