So for me it's:

The CDs I keep nearest to my CD player vs. everything else
Genre (maybe ordered by chronology within genre)
Importance of the artist &/or how much I like them
Chronology if I have lots of discs by the same artist
Maybe label would be in there somewhere as well

(This has been discussed before, but not as C or D.)

Although I will always have large piles of recent promos, and other assorted newly received/bought/borrowed stuff.

I knew an art director at a magazine I used to work for that filed her CD's according to the colour of the spine (all the reds together, all the whites together, etc.) Stranger than fiction.

that color ordering sounds very intriguing.
m.

It does look great, though.

Since my bookshelf is all out of order anyway, I would love to do the color thing.

I never tell this bit of information on a first date.

yeah, unless it's a librarian, it seems like one of those things you might do well to mention in safer waters... that's an interesting sorting though. probably pretty useful when trying to see the release in perspective with others...
m.

― man, Friday, 3 October 2003 18:36 (twenty years ago) link

What difference does it make? You only listen to one at time.

alphabetical ordering also leads to fun juxtapositions. Bruno Maderna > Madonna > Magma = dream concert (in that order).

ooooh boy.

Sometimes I don't know specifically what I want to listen to, but I know generally what type of music I want to put on. If the CDs are grouped by type, I can browse more easily that way.

Agree that there are many different similarities they could be grouped by. I just go with the ones that stand out the most for me.

Were you me? (My roommate for a laugh did color once.)

For a while I had chronologically by country, but the collection got too large...

now how can i rationally divide all of dance music into six styles (drawers)?

So alphabetical - with the stuff I don't listen to in a box somewhere else, and freebie compilations on a different shelf organised by magazine, then date - is the only option left. And, you know, it kinda works.

Ethnographic/field recordings come after the compilations, filed alphabetically by country of origin. That's probably the only real cop to genre...

But, and its a big but:

Broadly speaking, the stuff I DJ with ends up in one area of the floor. But then I always find things on albums I want to DJ with so it gets moved. And I DJ with a bloody massive range of stuff.

Spoken word records tend to end up in the same place, except when I DJ with them.

Then I have vast piles of rarely listened to stuff.

And Scott 1, 2, 3 and 4 look lovely next to each other on a bookshelf.

OH! and cd's. we've got about a thousand but i don't care where they go or what order they are in. they can go up the chimney for all i care. tapes are in boxes and every blind handful is a decades-old surprise.

i'm surprised you don't use dewey Nick

is Led Zeppelin filed under L or Z?
what aboout Jethro Tull - J or T?
The Band - B for Band, or under T?
Iggy Pop and the Stooges - P or S?
Thin Lizzy - T or L?

maybe I'm just stupid, but I always have trouble with this alphabetical system. After a while everything devolves into little piles of various discs scattered throughout the house anyway, so maybe I should just forget the whole thing.

Answers:
L
J
B
P
T

but I'm inpsired by this thread to put all the CDs together and order everything chronilogically. That sounds fun.

Spot on!

vinyl: 12"s by label name in alphabetical order. albums are not in order because i dont tend to buy vinyl albums and therefore dont have a lot.

cds: alphabetical order but they are split into 4 very general categories: jazz, classical, dance, rock/pop/hiphop/indie/etc. my policy for synth pop is to place it in the rock/pop/etc. section, probably because a lot of those artists (ie Gary Numan or New Order) come from the post-punk tradition. dance is basically kraftwerk then detroit techno, chicago house and everything that has come afterwards.

Iggy & The Stooges go under S for me, because I have two Stooges records and only one Iggy & The Stooges record and they need to be kept together.

A Tribe Called Quest is a difficult one because I would group the word "A" in with the word "The", but currently The Low End Theory sits between DJ Assualt and Babybird.

But where do your hardcore/hardstyle records go? And drum 'n bass? Electro?

Anyway, about the Stooges thing, 'Raw Power' just mentions "Iggy" and not the word "Pop", so it sure as shit goes next to 'Funhouse'. The real problem occurs when you've got things like the one I have with "Cock In My Pocket" and all that shit, it's called "Raw Power" (even though it isn't!) by "Iggy Pop And The Stooges". Where the heck does that go?

My quirks:
When a proper name is part of an overall band name, I'm consistent about where I file those. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, I file under J. The Dave Clarke 5, I file under C. I don't know why.

And I file compilations in alphabetically with everything else. (ie. Nuggets is somewhere in between NRBQ and Gary Numan).

Does anyone file movie soundtracks by composer? I was gonna do this some time ago, but never did. I don't have, like, an Ennio Morricone section. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly LP is right there in the G's.

I use those Ikea units with the 33cm square sections and sort boxes by mood. So edgy/tense; sexual; chilled; muscular; melancholy and euphoric kind of covers it... (except hip hop gets its own section)

i also have these metal boxes from ikea to store any cds like the mego releases mentioned above - anything oversized or with really lush packaging. this storage method bothers me because these are the cds that should be displayed. i don't want them getting dusty though...also cds or sets that fit nicely in a bookcase are with my books.

vinyl is by label. kind of.

i want to try the filing by color idea, but it would become impossible to find anything

Fastest retrieval for collections greater than a few hundred, surely? At least, I remember spending literally 5-10 minutes looking for a particular CD, before deciding anything other than alpha was now folly.

Although sorting by spine colour does suddenly seem appealing in a perverted sort of way.

Do y'all store CDRs entirely separately from the rest?

i file chronological by release date within each artist.

Compilations spanning a large number of years are tricky though. Date of latest recorded/released track or date of compilation?

Yeah, I do. At first I filed them by title, but then realized I wanted to have all my Morricone together.

I also tend to stick in solo stuff with the corresponding group, assuming it's more of a 'side-project' thing and not a full-blown, separate career. I.E. Neil Halstead in with the Mojave 3, Mark Kozelek stuff in with the Red House Painters, McCulloch in with Echo & The Bunnymen, etc.

Most stuff is alphabetical together under the dubious 'indie/rock/pop' idea in my head, with totally different sections for:
Dance (anything club-ish that you can actually dance to)
Electronic/Ambient (stuff you CAN'T dance to)
Downtempo/Hiphip (a tricky section - everything from stuff like Kruder & Dorfmeister, Kid Loco, Theivery Corporation, through to Ninja Tune stuff and then straight Hip Hop)

All above alphabetical because I have a lot, but other stuff such as Classical, Jazz, Blues is just all stuck together mostly by label since I don't have much.

Hiphip sounds like the best genre evah.

Now its: A-Z, singles and albums together, chronologically within artist (by release date, so comps after original albums), solo with band, Iggy under Stooges, CDRs in with the rest, separate section for comp albums, separate section for the masses off Idlewild singles I have for reasons I can't remember but all the Super Furry Animals in with the rest cos they have pretty spines.

How do people deal with free CDs given away by magazines? Separate section for me.

It'll take a while before I file my vinyl though. There's more of it and I like the way it kinda SPREADS across any room its put in, even if I put it all away neatly. It seems to breed and give me records I don't remember buying.

God damn you all to hell. And I really mean that.

The rest of my apartment tends to be a disorganized mess, but I am very meticulous about making sure the music collection is in the proper order.

things listened to recently
things listened to kinda recently
records i completely love and cherish

everything else is basically in a big sale pile that goes to the shop every couple of months.

It works pretty well for me with a few exceptions....

One of these is when essentially the same band / artist changes name, e.g.: Iggy Pop / Iggy & The Stooges / The Stooges as has already been said (fwiw, having been both together and separate and "P" and "S" in the past, they are all currently reunited under "I" - well, I figured if it was good enough for Martin C. Strong in his Great Rock Discography, it was certainly good enough for me!).

Having the Warsaw CD separated from the Joy Division ones offends me enormously 'though (New Order being separate doesn't bother me as that feels like a different band). Fortunately I stopped caring about Southern Death Cult / Death Cult / The Cult around 1985.

A sub-set of this is when individual artists stop pretending they are - or are still - bands, e.g.: having to separate Roddy Frame from Aztec Camera gnaws away the very fibre of my being (Roddy Frame IS Aztec Camera for fuck's sake!); similarly Paddy McAloon / Prefab Sprout and to a lesser extent Them / Van Morrison (again I don't feel the same way about Morrissey being separated from The Smiths 'cos that feels like two distinct acts).

Individuals are filed according to their surnames rather than their first names - but nicknames, titles and initials can produce some odd results.

Duke Ellington goes under "E" and Count Basie goes under "B" but Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band goes under "C" (on the basis that CB&HMB was supposed to be the name of the band rather than CB being specifically the name of Mr. Van Vliet).

Following similar logic, AR Kane goes under "A".

I'm pretty happy with with Prince Far-I going under "F" and with I-Roy and U-Roy going under "I" and "U" respectively; but slightly less confortable with Prince Buster being under "B"; not at all happy with King Tubby being under "T"; and I could easily lay awake all night fretting about Big Youth if I wasn't heavily sedated.

At the same time however, I'm almost equally happy putting Sun Ra under either "S" or "R" - but then I've never really expected to fully understand Sun Ra.

Of course the comp.s present their own problems - basically alphabetical although I tend to just ignore words like "Best" and "Greatest" in the titles and try to alphabetise them by a key defining word ("More" has to be ignored as well to avoid series being separated).

A number of people have suggested that I may be suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

Imagine!

I know who the bastards are 'though - I have little book with all of their names and addresses written down neatly in alphabetical order.

an excellent idea upthread is to put the cds bought in the current year at a separate place and file them in 1st january. in that way there is much less reshuffling to do and the new cds are separate and don't get lost in the huge mass. i think that's an improvement to the pure alpha method. i will think about doing this in the future.

Some discrepancies:
- solo artists filed by first name instead of last name (common in Portugal), so everything is ordered by its first name;
- side projects including all (or majority of) members of main group (or major contributors to it) (ex. Ciccone Youth, Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe, Palace whatever) go along with main group, others get filed separately;
- no various artists' compilations on my collection (though film soundtracks would be filed as "OST")

As my collection has now passed the #1300 mark, I'm starting to have some serious space problems, so a lot of my recent acquisitions are just being piled up by order of arrival...

This raises a number of further issues:
1. what if an album is released out of the sequence in which it was recorded (e.g. Prefab's Sprout's "Protest Songs" was recorded before "From Langley Park To Memphis" but released after it; Captain Beefheart's "Mirror Man" was recorded before "Trout Mask Replica" and "Lick My Decals Off Baby" but released after them; are we actually prepared to believe that The Residents' "Not Available" was recorded before "Third Reich And Roll", "Fingerprince", "Duck Stab" and "Buster & Glen" and locked away in a safe in pursuit of their belief in "the theory of obscurity", or is this just more of their crazy self-mythologising?)

2. (How) do you include compilations within the date-order? According to the last recorded tracks or the first one? At the lunatic extreme, do you consider the chronology of bonus tracks or just that of the album to which they've been added?

"i would never file lou reed or john cale under velvet underground. they have released much more solo albums than there are vu albums so they merit to be filed under their proper name."

I wouldn't file them with VU either because I think they both have careers that are substantially (and I don't just mean in terms of size) separate from VU.

Where do you file "Songs For Drella" 'though (or "My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts", "No Pussyfooting" and "Evening Star" for that matter!)?

"an excellent idea upthread is to put the cds bought in the current year at a separate place and file them in 1st january."

I suspect that would result in anything bought in the last few months of the year getting played a lot less than anything in the first few.

OK, the truth is that it scares me to think of the volume of my purchases being that visible!

compilations are filed by the date of the last recorded track. i haven't thought about the bonus track thing and i am not sure if i have any examples in m collection but logically the recording date should apply.

the careers of cale and reed are substantially different as vu because they are so long. if lou reed had only released one album i'd probably file it under vu.

songs for drella etc. are filed under the name of the first artist mentioned on the album which would be lou reed in this case. church of anthrax is therefore filed under john cale and not terry riley. wrong way up under eno and not cale.

there is a problem with the separate filing of recently purchased albums on a year to year base, you are right, but life is unjust sometimes...

1. the collection grows and grows and grows and becomes more and more difficult to access easily.

2. my brain disintegrates more and more the older i become and i bloody need a crutch to find things.

and of course i don't mind at all if strangers can navigate without problems in my collection. they should so that they can find rapidly what they want to listen to.

- Each format category subdivided into three release types.
- Single-artist releases (whether individual or band)
- Split-artist releases (two-artist splits in a non-collaborative context)
- Compilations (anything with more than two artists represented in a non-collaborative context) and soundtracks.

- Single-artist releases are sorted alphabetically by artist name. Last name takes sorting precedence with releases by individuals. Leading articles in band names are ignored except in some troublesome exceptions, based on "gut instinct" (A Flock Of Seagulls, A Tribe Called Quest, A Perfect Circle would all be under "A," for no reason I can currently justify). Acronynic band names are generally filed under their expanded name (records credited to "A.C." get filed under "Anal Cunt," "GBH" gets treated as "Grievous Bodily Harm," etc.). Personal titles ("MC," "DJ," etc.) are ignored.
- Releases are then subsorted alphabetically by title. This "chronological by release date" stuff is bullcrap!

- Split-artist releases get sorted by the name of the first-appearing artist (either on the A side of a vinyl or cassette release or the first track appearance on CD).

- Compilations are sorted by title only.

BOOM!!!!! Sorted.

i have twice that and the answer is no, not once. if it wasn't CDs it would be booze or clothes. not exactly asset building stuff now, is it? do you think i should be putting money into a mortgage instead?

I hope you are joking. 8000 records? Let's say you paid seven dollars each - that would total $56000. That is a lot of clothes and beer.

What is the purpose of having 8000 records?

Derrick May says he has 60,000 records, though I'm sure most of them were free.

i only cry a little when i think about the thousands of records that i have sold or traded away. even though i can't remember what half of them were anymore.i opened up a little store in philly years ago with a friend and a lot of my initial stock of records was from my own collection. i've been making up for lost time ever since. and i feel positively normal with people like mr. diamond and the surface noise around. i need lots more but i've slowed down a lot. i'm pickier now too. drove across the country last year and only came back with about 100 l.p.s or so. i listen to them all too! they get a lot of use. plus, they inspire me and get my brain going. see, i cry when i think about how much money people spend on higher education. i spent years reading books and listening to music and as a result i got to write for my favorite newspaper the village voice. if i had gone to college i would have ended up with a real job and later i would have killed myself and my whole family in a blind rage. but i'm happy now and i have a family that i adore and we live on a beautiful island in the sea. thank god for all those records!!!

i heart scott seward

my collection is now divided up into vague and inconsistant sections all over the house. theres the discs my wife likes. the discs no one likes (hidden, just, but theres so many). the discs i just listened to. the discs i listened to last week. the discs i'm planning on listening to. the discs without covers. a clump of reggae appears to be forming over there. some jazz there, but not the disc i was looking for last night.

I found it this morning in another discs cover. i wonder where its own cover is? and i wonder where the disc from that other cover is?

i am a librarian.

Gaz, In my experience of similar situations:

a) the disc that belongs in the cover you've got without the disc in it, is almost certainly in the cover of the disc you've got without the cover for it (if you're unlucky there may be additional discs and covers involved);

b) it's probably best not to even attempt to put discs back in their covers when you're that far gone - in future, just leave 'em out 'til you're feeling more together and put them away then.

Hope that was some help?

I agree entirely although it does make me wonder.... is there anyone here who thinks (any) bands (with the obvious exception of The The) should be filed under "T" for "The"?

"Acronynic band names are generally filed under their expanded name (records credited to "A.C." get filed under "Anal Cunt," "GBH" gets treated as "Grievous Bodily Harm," etc.)"

I'd agree about "A.C." (I file "PiL" as "Public Image Limited" on the same basis) but "G.B.H." are filed as "G.B.H." in my collection because (afaik) they were always called "G.B.H." as opposed to having once been "Grievous Bodily Harm" and later shortened their name.... (actually there's now a faint alarm bell ringing - weren't they originally called "Charged G.B.H."?!?).

Hmmmm. Thinking back, The Ballistics / The Mighty Ballistics / The Mighty Ballistics Hi-Power / M.B. Hi-Power used to cause me as many conundrums as Southern Death Cult / Death Cult / The Cult.

"Personal titles ("MC," "DJ," etc.) are ignored."

Hmmmm. I don't actually feel entirely comfortable about DJ Shadow wherever I put him.

Also, what about MC5? They actually represent a number of conundrums:

What do people do about numbers? Separate section or spelled out as letters (The Four Tops go under "F", 999 go under "N", 23 Skidoo go under "T"....). If numbers, do you look at the whole number (The Four Tops go before 23 Skidoo) or just the first digit (23 Skidoo go before The Four Tops)? As a side issue, is there actually some deep-seated pschological reason why they always have to The Four Tops rather than the 4 Tops or is it just because that's the way I've always seen it written?)

Do you treat Mc's and Mac's the same (i.e. ignore the "a" in Mac, like they do in the 'phone books) so Paddy McAloon gets filed before Kirsty MacColl or just treat them as ordinary letters so Kirsty MacColl gets filed before Paddy McAloon?

Finally (for now, anyway) which should be filed first and why (I guess this is basically just a question of good filing practice so.... Gaz maybe?):
Blackalicious or Black Uhuru?
Devo or Howard Devoto?
King Crimson or Carole King?
The Mob or Moby?
Patti Smith or The Smiths?
Super Furry Animals or Supergrass?

Oh and spam@me.now, I think you may be on the wrong board if you think most of us are going to see owning 4,000 records as something other than either an aspiration or a memory!

My system is best - *my genres*. e.g obv. ones like Motown, Factory, Freakbeat, Disco, Krautrock. Also some less obv like : 'Manchester 1980's non-Factory bands' 'Post-punk bands with women singers (GAOB, Slits, Raincoats, Delta 5, Liliput)'. I've never not been able to find anything apart from a Can promo in a card sleeve which was lost for a whole morning in 1999.

Genres just wouldn't work for me - some of the things I like most I like precisely because they blur those sorts of genre divides!

Also, do numbers (50 Cent, 2Pac, 10CC, etc) go before "A" or aligned to their lettered spelling (Fifty Cent, Tupac, Ten CC)?

The point is that *I* know where they are. That's all that matters.

Dr. C's system is alright - in theory... I'm arleady somewhat separating my collection by genre, as most of us are in some way. The problem is that unless you get REALLY specific (which then causes more problems with artists crossing genres), you wind up with WAY too much stuff in a particular genre to find it easily. Good lord, if I had an 'twee indiepop' section it would take up a whole shelf and I'd still never find anything unless it was alphabetised...

Why more than with any other system?

*must take up rather a lot of shelf space!*

A lot of wood, yes!

huzzah.

Tried a similar thing once, mainly because i loved the fact that, unlike *normal* people we can have 'genres' like 'trevor horn related' and the like - so brilliantly idiosyncratic. Stopped because they look silly next to such massive things as '70's pop'.

Yeah, there are problems here. MDC being a good example (where the letters stood for something different on pretty much every release, I think). Barring troublesome examples like that, I guess I look at abbreviated names as generally standing for a more "complete" name, and less as the shortening of a name over time. This also, however, creates problems when I don't know what an initialed band's letters stand for (like DI -- any help?).
I think GBH became Charged GBH later in their career, I could be wrong though.
I consider Southern Death Cult, Death Cult, and The Cult as three separate entities; they get filed under S, D, and C respectively.

Hmmmm. I don't actually feel entirely comfortable about DJ Shadow wherever I put him.

I was concealing secret doubts about my across-the-board amputation of "DJ" from peoples' names. For the most part I'm fine removing it, but in some cases where it seems to be a part of a larger phrase -- such as DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid -- I get uncertain.

Also, what about MC5? They actually represent a number of conundrums

I wouldn't treat this "MC" the same way I would a hip-hop "MC." But it does present problems with my acronym rule. Maybe I need to split some more hairs and make a distinction between acronyms that are meant to stand for something and acronyms where what they stand for is somewhat more incidental, like the MC5. Ugh.

What do people do about numbers? Separate section or spelled out as letters . . .?

I treat numbers as their spelled-out equivalents in both band names and titles, unless the numbers are meant to denote a sequence. Carter USM's 101 Damnations,, 30 Something, and 1992 The Love Album get filed as if they were "One hundred and one," "Thirty," and, yes, I'm embarrassed to say, "One thousand nine hundred nintey two." AFX's Analogue Bubblebath 3 and Analogue Bubblebath 4 get filed in that order.

Do you treat Mc's and Mac's the same (i.e. ignore the "a" in Mac, like they do in the 'phone books)?

Personally, no. "Mac" would precede "Mc."

I need to have my head examined for giving this stuff this much thought.

Dr. C,

If you do start getting into King Crimson (and especially if you start exploring Adrian Belew's solo stuff) you're going to have to move that "Bowie / Eno / Roxy" section to sit between the your new "Prog" section and wherever you currently have Talking Heads filed.

Then of course Tomorrow and Caravan will link that "Prog" section to the "Psych" section....

Josh, "I guess I look at abbreviated names as generally standing for a more "complete" name, and less as the shortening of a name over time."

So everthing that includes the word "Foetus" get's filed under "F", right? I agree with that....

" I consider Southern Death Cult, Death Cult, and The Cult as three separate entities; they get filed under S, D, and C respectively." Huh? OK, Southern Death Cult maybe (only Ian Astbury in common with the later incarnations) but separating Death Cult from The Cult is just perverse surely (Ian Astbury and Billy WERE Death Cult / The Cult to all intents and purposes - who cared who the rythm section were?).

The abbreviated names always caused me problems too - I spelled them out. My OMD records were always treated as 'Orchestral...', etc, but what about REM? Surely nobody would file them as 'Rapid' (or maybe it represents something else for Stipe & co. - I'm not sure what the original inspiration was)

I used to have numbers right at the beginning (like a computer database), but then I reverted to the 'spell it out' system.

I had IKEA Billy bookshelves with extra shelves for my CDs (about 2000), but I moved here to London last winter, and unfortunately most of my collection is now boxed up back in Canada. I've been forced to become a 'CD Binder' guy, which I absolutely HATE. I just couldn't afford to ship all the stuff over - didn't seem like much point, plus I loaded my laptop with all the MP3s it could hold. Whenever I move back and re-unite with my collection, I'm gonna get myself a case of beer and have a big ol' re-org geek fest by myself. Yee-ha! Sad, I know.

I need to have my head examined for 2 reasons:
1) Starting this damn thread
2) Continuing to post to it!!

see I like the fact that I can't find the record I want to play bcz it forces me to play something else. but say i really wanted to play that disc...I'll search for it and go crazy so it can put you into a different frame of mind when you actually find it (so you can hear a record differently).

(yes, the record collection is still unfiled and you ppl are not gonna make me do anything ever).

I also have a big pile of disorganised stuff that has been listened to "recently".

I hear you, but I gotta be a hardliner about this. Different band name = different musical entity. Except in cases, like Foetus, where it becomes clear they are deliberately changing their name around just to fuck with me personally and to make me crazy.

The abbreviated names always caused me problems too - I spelled them out. My OMD records were always treated as 'Orchestral...', etc, but what about REM? Surely nobody would file them as 'Rapid'

This is a very good point. Shit. I . . . I gotta think this over . . .

sorry that was a typo. sorry.

thanks stewart. that'll be when the kids leave home i fear...by which time....ARRAAAGHARGAHH!!

ps i started some rudimentary re-sorting based loosely on genre last night. the problem i forsee is i have several shelves/storage areas spread through the house. will all the jazz fit on that shelf over there? and as that shelf is in "public space" should i put the 20th c avant garde there cos it fits, or just half the reggae?

If you do start getting into King Crimson (and especially if you start exploring Adrian Belew's solo stuff) you're going to have to move that "Bowie / Eno / Roxy" section to sit between the your new "Prog" section and wherever you currently have Talking Heads filed**

Talking Heads are in "CBGBs" of course. As for my Yes albums(!)they're in a separate (huge) "new listening" pile that's not yet on the shelves.

I feel that I am holding a lonely vigil here against the alphabetising metalists ;). Good to see that Julio has the right idea too!

Oh well, why didn't you say someone else was responsible for your dilemma Gaz?

In that case there's a very simple, sensible and completely reasonable solution:

Explain to the children very carefully, in a balanced and measured tone and without losing your temper, raising your voice or starting to cry hysterically, that those are Daddy's toys, not theirs and that although they are perfectly welcome to play with them (I'm assuming you are an easy-going liberal type like me in this repect of course!) but that if they ever fail to put fuckin' things back where they found 'em again, you'll immediately cut their horrible, fuckin' sticky, little hands off with a large ceremonial Samurai sword.

Second offences will be dealt with by summarily throwing them to a pack of ravening lions

Hey, don't knock it 'til you've tried it - it's worked for me!

Well, OK.... actually it may have worked against me 'cos now whenever my partner or her daughter get anything out to play they just leave the damned things out for me to put away again.

Bugger.

Do y'all store CDRs entirely separately from the rest?

I separate the regular CDs from the CDRs, because they don't really go together.

http://www.geocities.com/teulr/new-1.jpg

Afrika Bambaataa, under A or B?

im currently sorting my records out. getting rid of loads too, which i feel bad about, but i dont really care for half the late 90s indie rap stuff ive got here. i kinda think i should keep it just for collections sake but i cant remember half of it now, so im prob not going to remember it when its gone either. (anyone else buy stuff then never really listen to it?). i have started putting it all in a-z order but am now thinking its just stupid cos im not going to often think 'let me listen to some dj target', im prob more likely to think 'let me listen to some grime' (although ok, sometimes i might think 'let me listen to some target'). the virgoan in me is making this take a lot longer.

How about sorting by label. Works especially well for "underground" and dance music.

Do people file right to left or left to right?

I file right to left, i.e.

D <- C <- B <- A
H <- G <- F <- E
...

Am I mad? It makes sense to me somehow, the CD all point the right way, in that the front of the CD points to the front of the filing if you get what I mean...

Inherent in this question is a 'Classic' vote for alphabetical filing. Though I have just pulled all my Keiji Haino related CDs (Haino solo, collabs, Fushitsusha, Aihiyo, Compilations featuring etc.) out to file separately, for collection admiring purposes.

Classic.

I'd had it alphabetical for years but, after two moves in a row where things got shuffled and then reshuffled, I left the lps out of order (plus birth of child and house repairs and stuff that was deemed more important). I'd convinced myself I would enjoy the random selection and finding things I might not seek out had they been in order. While that was nice sometimes, I grew tired over the years of wanting to hear a specific record or artist and then scanning the spines for 15 minutes and ...no dice. With cds maybe it's easier since the spine is a bit larger and they can line up just right, but the lps often have small text, or have the sleeve pressed off-center so the title's falling off the spine, or it's just obscured behind plastic (major culprit), or it's one of those records that has nothing written on the spine.

In some spare time over the last few days I'm now putting the lps back in order and, for the first time, the 45s too.

my favoured system is no system at all. a vague memory of where things are means many happy browsing accidents.

and filing music seems somehow contrary to the free-roaming spirit of exploring music in the first place.

ATM filed:
Z > Y > X > W...
...> D > C > B > A

but the best system by miles was by year, my vinyl is still by year, I don't know what I was thinking going back to the meaningless alphabet.

before i got rid of 90% of my cd collection it was in alphabetical order, then i moved everything to HD and it fell out of use and my housemates started using my inlays as mfkn speed wraps. now that i've a much smaller selection (to go with my much smaller, much more normal house) it's in no particular order other than vague genres/moods and of course the more popular stuff is in the living room, while less listened-to stuff's in the kitchen.

my HD is in alphabetical order though, although I have two directories - one for stuff before last october (backed up on another HD), and stuff since.

Alphabetical. But it poses problems. We bought new shelves 2 years ago, and left, (we thought), ample room for extras in each shelf...and now...well...we're gonna have to annex the 'emergency' shelf at the very end, and move a little bit from each section down.
And I DON'T WANNA. so I have a stack of new purchases that I've bought over the last few months that just sit by my computer, because I really don't want to be assed to move them all around and file them away.

I built in hefty buffer zones at the end of each letter when I did my first main filing, filling the gaps with blank cases (also useful to have handy for replacing breakages). These buffers have lasted a year and a half in coping with the new additions, but I now need to do some full-scale moving again.

Oh and buy some more racks.

yeah, I think we may have to admit some form of defeat and spring for another rack. I like that blank-case buffer zone though. Our buffers were just a gap, but the cases is a good call.

I've always been an alpha order man myself, but never left space at the end of racks. I just took a day at the very end of each year to file everything that had been sitting on my 'recent acquisitions' shelf. Billy Bragg does this too, and called it his "nursery shelf" - that bit really endeared him to me.

Aye, filing something away can sometimes be the deathknell for it, if it hasn't yet had its due listening time. Unless it's already wormed itself into your brain then it can easily get forgotten once it's up there in the main racks, so it can be good to keep new stuff out on rotation elsewhere for some time....

but the best system by miles was by year, my vinyl is still by year, I don't know what I was thinking going back to the meaningless alphabet.

So how would this work for e.g. a compilation of music from the 60s and 70s that is released in the 90s?

is was

Got rid of my jewel cases about 7 years ago and put each CD into a rectangular plastic wallet big enough to allow the spine to be read when placed together in a draw. Only downisde is that I had to go alpabetical rather than the rainbow-spectrum system I used previously which went something like: greys->white->yellow->orange->red->purple->blue)green>greys(again)>black.

Vinyl is by genre: pop/rock/jazz are alphabetical, dance is by genre, but then arranged by label.

So how would this work for e.g. a compilation of music from the 60s and 70s that is released in the 90s?

Dating any record is a bit arbitrary, so discretion required for functionality. I'd treat a reissued album (w/ or w/out bonus tracks) as the original, comps&best ofs I'd put under the earliest release (e.g. "best disco album in the world... ever! 2" goes under '71 cos of the Shaft tune, complete Jimmie Rodgers is '26...). If I was interested in performances I'd organise classical stuff by recording/release dates but as it is I think in terms of composition dates (so I'd start w/Leonin&Perotin). Having it reflect yr idea of the history of music was what was good about it, sort of made it a resource just sitting there in order.

but the best system by miles was by year
I never considered this but reading it it makes perfect sense and I can't wait to see the juxtapositions that are going to pop up! I think I'd organise dedicated shelves for compilations that aren't one-artist/band comps.

The main reason I did this was because I inherited some shelves with about 50 compartments in a grid so I could dedicate half/one/two compartments per year and have lots of evenly distributed space for additions and not need to shift everything round all the time.

I gave up on filing my physical collection alphabetically because it was too much trouble moving everything for new purchases, but it was taking so long to open my mp3 folder that I thought I'd split it up, one folder per first letter of artist's name. And now I am having some moments.

La Düsseldorf under L or D? D'Arcangelo under D or A?
Is the "Captain" in Captain Beefheart a title? "DJ"?

What about pseudonyms which look like names (Marc Bolan, Laurel Halo)? I would be inclined to file by "surname" but then you have a whole continuum of arguably somewhat name-like 2-word solo artist pseudonyms and you've got to draw a line somewhere: Alex Smoke? Gary War? Robag Wruhme? And what if you don't actually know - Kemper Norton? And Josh Wink is almost his real name, but does that really mean he should be under W but if he'd called himself Josh Bink he'd be under J?

Yeah I'm thinking about this too much, and it doesn't really matter for digital files because I can always run a search, but I thought, I bet ILX has thought about this already...

1. "L"
2. "D"
3. "C"
4. "DJ"

Marc Bolan has solo records? At any rate, I file under last name in those cases (i.e. Edward Ka-Spel under "K").

no easy answers to some of these questions, but as a 3rd generation librarian I enjoy this kind of hairsplitting.

I am afraid that the rising tide of filing-by-first-name will eventually sweep me under, right now my hard drive is an unwieldy mix of the two.

I don't have any solo Bolan but according to wikipedia yes; I checked before listing him.

I work in a library (though am not a librarian) so I'm aware I'm reinventing some wheels but a quick glance at a book of cataloguing rules persuaded me that it was too different a problem space. I'm all for adding skip in filing indicators to ID3 tags, though!

(and yes, there does seem to be a certain perversity in using a computer system that will put them in plain ASCII order for me, and manually filing them to be in a less maintainable order instead, but hey)

just put it where you'll find it!

librarians have to catalog stuff so numerous people can find it. it's your personal collection so i wouldn't worry too much about all that, unless it's fun for you

1. "L"
2. "D"
3. "C"
4. "DJ"

Agree with all of this except La Düsseldorf, but I know I'm on a losing battle with this one. I ignore foreign words meaning 'the' in the same way I ignore 'the', basically.

Kemper Norton

It's a pseudonym. Most single-artist pseudonyms I would file like real names with surname first, but band names that are people's names (hello John Sims) would be under the first letter of the whole thing. For some reason I think of Kemper as more of a band name, so he'd be under K for me, but that might just be a quirk.

don't think the "La" in "La Düsseldorf" can be read as a conventional "The" because of the dual language mucking about

but then i think the cleanest way of avoiding all the first name difficulties is just to file by first name.

some terrible joke/paradox about where you wd file "The The" in here

Yeah I had Die Goldenen Zitronen under G and L'Augmentation under A in my CD filing days, but the mismatch in language between "La" and "Düsseldorf" was giving me pause, making me wonder if it really was an article. (xp or what NV said)

Likewise, don't know if A Minor Forest is a particular undefined small forest or a forest in the key of A Minor, and surely the ambiguity is an intentional part of the name.

Thank you for Kemper Norton fact-check! It is a kind of villagey-sounding name and will probably end up under K in my arbitrary decision-making process.

(Yes, it is for "fun"; a strange kind of fun I grant you, but there it is...)

iirc I have one La Dusseldorf LP and one La Peste LP, both under L, and I guess they are both there because the bands weren't from France. not sure if I have anything by a French band called La something. probably best I just keep avoiding them

am also now becoming aware of inconsistencies - A Minor Forest were under A and A Certain Ratio under C. this is hell

back when i still had cds i did this by artist. and then by album chronologically within artist i think. now i just have spotify and itunes.

lol just remembered any band name starting with "A (other word/s)" gets filed under "A", as in A Primary Industry. it's so much less common than 'The".

do you treat "this" like "the?"
right now "this mortal coil" is under the T section

For me, it's only 'the' and foreign permutations of. A Certain Ratio would be under A. I realise the difficulty with La Düsseldorf's double linguistic thing, but I won't change my mind. Even though it makes La! Neu? even more difficult to file.

what about 'thee' which is just a silly way of spelling 'the' in the circumstances?

"th'" is the most annoying thing actually

Avoid this conundrum by boycotting artists who do that.

"This Mortal Coil" under "this", yes

"Thee Oh Sees" are under "thee", right after "The The"

With 'thee' I give credence to the band clearly making a "thing" about the word, so I put them under T. I don't think I own any records by Th' Faith Healers, and can't think of any other bands that do that. Not sure what I'd do. Probably F.

yeah I wound do F for that as well, it's a fine line

th' inbred was the other band i had in mind, old 80s band on alt tentacles

seems I have Th'Faith Healers under F... L'Acephale (from the US) under A, L'Altra (from the US) under L. can't deal w/ this

but band names that are people's names (hello John Sims) would be under the first letter of the whole thing.

PJ Harvey?

I don't have anything by Thee Oh Sees, but I do have Thee Silver Mt. Zion etc. -- which gets back to the issue of band names starting with "A" or "An," my solution being to file it under "S".

This Mortal Coil unequivocally belongs under "T," btw.

funny i feel like i file silver mt zion under S - it wasn't always "thee" was it? used to be "a" silver mt zion?

Most of my records have plain sleeves so just cant look down the spines anyway

More and more i like the idea of painting over the middles of the records and forgetting things like the names of them, but just associating them with whatever is painted there

funny i feel like i file silver mt zion under S - it wasn't always "thee" was it? used to be "a" silver mt zion?

Yes and yes.

PJ Harvey's real last name is Harvey iirc, so she goes under 'H"

PJ Harvey?

PJ Harvey is the name of the artist, not a fictional name. So it'd be under Harvey. If you choose to call your band your own name then you're treating everyone else as a session player; don't then try to say "but it's a band".

xp

what about e.g. The Charlie Daniels Band?

"D" for me, although I don't have any of those records

like "Baker-Gurvitz Army" would be under 'B"

PJ Harvey is/was ostensibly a band, though. Still, despite protestations from Peej Pedants, though, most people treat it as a solo act, and not the best example in this case.

A more straightforward example: how do we file Dave Matthews Band Name Your Reasons Why They Are So Bad & Hated?

basically if there is a real name in my collection, it goes under last name regardless of individual vs. band semantics

what about "mr" and "mister", like would I file it (for example), mister mister/momus/mr airplane man OR momus/mr airplane man/mister mister. St Vincent before or after saint vitus?

hahaha jeez I have no idea

subjectively:

Mister/Momus/Mr

Saint/St

basically if there is a real name in my collection, it goes under last name regardless of individual vs. band semantics

sir you are history's greatest monster

hey you gotta break some eggs to make an omelet

Move over, Jimmy Carter! xp

Daniels Band, Charlie, The
Matthews Band, Dave, The

Lee, re: PJ Harvey, I repeat: If you choose to call your band your own name then you're treating everyone else as a session player; don't then try to say "but it's a band".

Mr & St I think I expand into 'mister' and 'saint', but I'd have to check, it doesn't come up much.

because a band name might look the same as one of the band members doesn't mean that the band name is doing the same thing as the person's name

what about the Freddy Jones Band, noted chicago roots rockers. No member of the band is named Freddy Jones.

Burrito Brothers, The Flying

AKA "Oh and by the way, which one's Freddy?"

SMH, Noodle.

I think half the reason I don't own any records by excellent Danish jazz bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen is bc no one knows where to file him alphabetically (and neither would I!!!!)

Floyd, Pink

I already dealt with this stuff, guys! Read the bloody thread.

can see the value in keeping your Alice Cooper and your Cooper, Alice records separate tho

Most single-artist pseudonyms I would file like real names with surname first, but band names that are people's names (hello John Sims) would be under the first letter of the whole thing.

So if it's a fictional name that covers the band, it's the first fucking letter.

PJ Harvey doesn't get a pass, sorry. She chose to do it that way, that's the way it's gonna be.

I was looking for one of his LPs recently and looked in H, O, and P and couldn't find it. Turns out there was a scratched copy but it was filed in under the section of one of the sidemen (after someone got frustrated with the conundrum probably)

emily i don't agree if you mean "treating everybody as a session player" - yr status in a band is defined by contractual or other remunerative things, not the name of the band

i file randomly.

makes the hunt for a particular cd a lot more fun.

yr status in a band is defined by contractual or other remunerative things

Okay, I know you're talking about "real bands" with "real contracts" playing "real music" or whatever here, but that is so completely a) unlike any band experience I've ever had, and b) unromantic. ;_;

actually not earning any money is a good counter to my theory, must rethink

anyway, yr status in the band isn't about the band name, people might just mutually decide that one of them has a really cool name, like Dave Killdozer or Gary Modern Jazz Quartet

^__^

Yeah but what about PJ Harvey?

/ducks

ya know, most of these problems are solved with a "file under first name only" system, but I am just not ready for that part of the 21st century

our radio station switched over to first name filing a couple of years ago because that's how iTunes works

(assuming you don't change the CDDB tags)

yeah as i say i feel like first names is the most consistent way to go

But what about PJ Harvey (& John Parish) re: file by first name?

http://blu.stb.s-msn.com/i/CE/BDEF77ADBC4FCF24487FB64DB4A6B0.jpg
http://cdn.stereogum.com/files/2009/03/pj_harvey-a_man_a_woman.jpg

Their fault for changing the order of their names?

i assume the change in order indicates significant differences between the two projects and wd file them separately accordingly

I file it under the "spotify" icon

i assume the change in order indicates significant differences between the two projects and wd file them separately accordingly

yeah this, see also the 3 David Tibet/Steven Stapleton albums which I think are in different order depending

I'm proud of myself. I now group all Bill Callahan and Smog records together, under C. Asmus Tietchens and Hematic Sunsets records together, under T.

if you file by upc code number, all of these problems are immediately solved.

and then you just put some upc code detection software into your phone and everything is easy to find.

brothers johnson goes under "b" yes?

I think I'm inconsistently consistent. Tom Robinson Band under R, Bram Tchaikovsky (a pseudonym) under T.

I've had them under 'b' forever, but just had a momentary doubt thanks to this thread when I wanted to play strawberry letter 23

I have ~350 records sorted alphabetically (and chronologically for artists with multiple entries) in 4 categories (rock/pop, hiphop, jazz, soundtracks) with rock/pop being the biggest of these

thinking of rearranging them to form a top 350 of my collection, rating and ranking my collection

I'd do it for fun and to shake things up a bit, and while atm it's nice that friends can easily check what Neil Young records I have by going to Y, it'll perhaps be even more fun to have them offended when they find that Trans has been relegated to the lower shelves (or smth)

anyone tried this?

what sort of person looks for neil young records?

it's be fun arrange the records so that the best ones are directly next to the record player, the merely good albums kind of trail off toward the hall, the meh ones are near the front door, and the worst ones are kind of casually flung next to a box marked "free records" outside by the garbage

i just want to bump this to draw attention to the first few words of my post just above, i did a great job

You did a good job, you stacked the letters in each word very neatly

My records mostly look like this, I dont remember what most of them are called but I do know that spring is coming

http://i.ebayimg.com/images/i/161566344572-0-1/s-l1000.jpg

it would be very easy for you to arrange your collection by color

By Pitchfork score, duh.

Old system, until this afternoon:
- Collections for each decade, with each decade alphabetized.

New system:
1. All my 5-star records are in a separate section on the top shelf, alphabetized.
2. Jazz gets its own section. Though I may backtrack on this decision during the next re-org.
3. Everything else alphabetized (I collated all the decades in a massive merge sort operation)

Seems reasonable, my mate has always advocated a separate section for the best stuff, the theory being it will encourage more listening of favorites over endless crate digging.

sorted by whether or not the pile has been knocked flying recently.
With most recent purchases on top or possibly most recently played.
Always make sure you have more than one pile of cds around you and that most of them are obscured either by having other stuff piled on top of them or by the rest of the pile. So when you go to find something you are bound to find something else entirely.
Keeps your listening fresh or not as the case may be.
the Pollyanna system.

Idgi - if you organize by rating, don't you have to remember the rating of every record you own in order to find anything quickly?

For records: Alphabetical by size (12", 10", 7"), and then one square dedicated to new purchases, old favorites, and passing fancies. That square gets wheedled back down to a handful every few weeks as it slowly fills up and spills over into the turntable area. Another two long shelves are "to be sold" LPs/12"s and 7"s, which are every so often sold and every so often re-evaluated and put back in the main collection. My wife's LPs are another shelf, and another section is absolute dreck I was given by friends who know I like records and which I should throw out but...

CDs: In boxes in the garage attic. Not convenient, but no real CD player anymore and no room in the house. Hoping to get a dedicated CD player again when we do some remodeling and regain some space, and then these will come back in.

Cassettes: So few left, but these are in two small boxes nears the LPs. Getting my old Aiwa refurbished so i can play these properly again, as I've purchased two cassettes so far this year (Poison Ruïn and Angel Bat Dawid) so maybe more to come.

Idgi - if you organize by rating, don't you have to remember the rating of every record you own in order to find anything quickly?

― Taliban! (PBKR)

Yes I do, but it gives me a chance to reevaluate each time I play an album.

Also, I have my entire collection rated in discogs, so I can always fall back on that.