Filing your music alphabetically - C/D?

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?

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.