Tracking Music Collection

Randy Myers

Randy Myers

Well-known member
Joined
Nov 7, 2015
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Location
Kansas
I am curious how everyone tracks and organize their music collection. Do you keep a list or just wing it?

I have friends who have Albums, CDs, etc., all over the place. Some have GBs, TBs, etc., of digital files and have no idea what they have. Others are ultra organized to a point of having special rooms for their albums. One of our club members who writes for an audio magazine has a room which is climate controlled (almost looks like a vault with a glass door) where his albums are stored and organized.

Personally I have a cabinet where all of my disks are keep. I have the SACDs separated from CDs, but both are in alphabetical order by the artist last name. All of my digital downloaded files are on my music server and also backed up on three separate drives, one being my NAS on my network and two external drives.

I am sure that my collection is much smaller than most members, but it is growing. Because I am an ultra organized type person I wrote a computer program for tracking my music. I also track my movies/videos, family and friends addresses, phone numbers, birthdays, etc. I even created a recipe section that my wife does not use :(....

Anyway, here is a print out of my music list as an example...

Just curious how other members track their collections... :D
 
Mike said:
My LP's are in alphabetical order.
Click to expand...

Cool Mike...do you have downloads or other digital files, or mainly concentrate on vinyl? If so do you track them anyway? Do you have a list of your LP's or do you do what I used to, just stand there thumbing through albums trying to decide what to listen to? :) Just being curious how other people manage their music collections...
 
I mainly listen to vinyl at home...call me crazy, but it's the tactile experience and sonic experience I enjoy and have for 40 years. In deciding what to listen to, I seriously just reach into a stack of albums and pull one out. Last night it was Bill Withers Live at Carnegie Hall. http://store.acousticsounds.com/d/95147/Bill_Withers-Live_At_Carnegie_Hall-180_Gram_Vinyl_Record

I listened to both LP's in the album all the way through. Throughly enjoyable.

I have 5000+ albums in Canada in my in-laws cold, dark basement. They are not organized. I really must find a way to get them down to Florida. In Florida, I have a closet full of albums organized alphabetically. I ran out of room there, so now I have one of these: https://www.lpbin.com/lpbin2 The albums in there are not in any particular order. I thoroughly enjoy just flipping through, looking at the album covers and grabbing one. If I want to find a particular album, I know where to find it. Can't find that missing sock, but I can find my albums.

I ran out of room with the LP Bin above and just bought four of these: http://waxstacks.com/ -- the price of these is a bit nuts, but I know the guy who owns the company (he used to work at DynAudio) and wanted to give him support (no, I did not get any discount).

I occasionally put on tape, but it can be a bit of a PITA. I have a lot of digital files from my ripped CD's, SACD's. They are organized by Artist/Album. I will be honest, I have some audiophile friends who absolutely hate vinyl. When they visit, you can be sure we fire up the DAC and listen to the same old sh!t: Keith Don't Go, some Dire Straits song, etc. I begin to wonder if we've lost our sheer joy of an album experience. In the old days, it was about the album. Every album was an experience. You listened beginning to end. Today, we make "playlists" and hop around songs like our fingers are on fire. Can you imagine if we watched movies in this fashion?

I do enjoy putting on a CD/SACD and listening all the way through as well, but for me, I love the whole experience of vinyl when I'm alone. I understand that people say vinyl is a hassle, but then talk about their NAS, USB Regen going into their router and switch and .... and this part isn't talking to that part....well, you get the point.

Sorry, I digressed.

P.S. you kids get off my lawn! :)
 
Randy.......My LP's are stored in alphabetical order. I don't need a list because I generally know what vinyl I want to spin and have an album or two already in mind when I go to pull them out.

My digital library is stored on my Aurender N10, all CD's and downloaded files to 24/192. The Aurender Conductor app does the work of organizing for me by creating searchable alphabetical lists by song title, artist, album title, genre, and cover art, plus I can search by bit rate (16Bit or 24Bit) and PCM or DSD. That completely negates any need for a spreadsheet. All digital is backed up to a hard drive that remains disconnected from my network unless I am updating the files.
 
Hehe... Mike, I thoroughly enjoyed reading through. That is great, other than there is no way I could leave 5000 albums up in Canada :)....

Everyone enjoys their collections in different ways. I guess the main objective of this thread :).... I used to really enjoy vinyl but after getting back in to this hobby and building from scratch whenever I think about getting a table I start remembering all the care... but thumbing through albums and looking at the covers, etc., is something I did enjoy.

I tend to like to listen to full albums (CDs and digital) more so then bouncing around. But the convenience of testing different things when trying something out is also very nice.

Anyway, I hope to hear from many other members here because I find this very interesting. If anyone wants a copy of my program that I use to track stuff I would be glad to provide it, I mean I wrote it so it is not breaking any copy writes :)....
 
Mike.......Back in the late 60's and early 70's we used to go to the record stores on the day an album was released to buy it and couldn't wait to get back home with new music to share with our friends. The stylus got dropped in the groove, side A and side B played in their entirety, sometimes immediately playing the album a second time. New LP's were like gold to us. Vinyl was king. Living in San Francisco during those times kept all of us on the leading edge of new music. When we weren't home listening to music were we enjoying live concerts in Golden Gate Park, or heading out to the Fillmore West or the Avalon Ballroom to see our favorite bands. Those were great times. I am happy to have those memories. It's a whole different scene today.
 
Very much so... I remember often going to the record store the day of a new release... Alice Cooper, Led Zeppelin, etc., etc.... those were great days!
 
jdandy said:
Mike.......Back in the late 60's and early 70's we used to go to the record stores on the day an album was released to buy it and couldn't wait to get back home with new music to share with our friends. The stylus got dropped in the groove, side A and side B played in their entirety, sometimes immediately playing the album a second time. New LP's were like gold to us. Vinyl was king. Living in San Francisco during those times kept all of us on the leading edge of new music. When we weren't home listening to music were we enjoying live concerts in Golden Gate Park, or heading out to the Fillmore West or the Avalon Ballroom to see our favorite bands. Those were great times. I am happy to have those memories. It's a whole different scene today.
Click to expand...

Great memories Dan. We had Sam The Record Man in Toronto, and I would be standing waiting for the doors to open to sniff out the new vinyl albums for that week.

Yes, very different today.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Randy, my vinyls are organized into music styles like jazz, blues, rock, classical etc. When a section becomes too big I divide it up into subcategories by artist in jazz and artist or composer in classical.

CDs are organized into music styles in the garage, only listen to rips and streaming in digital.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
I had thought about organizing my disks by genera but then decided against it since there are so many that cross into different ones :)... I like the idea though!
 
Since I moved, my LPs are still split between the storage unit and my store, in boxes, some in Ikea racks :) Thankfully, I had them sorted in alphabetical order, and also split in three big categories (rock/jazz/classical), so they're not that hard to track down if I have to. With 4000 or so, it's kinda hard to find one spot to have them all, and get rid of the boxes, but...

The CDs I've ripped long ago, and have them all on my server, where I keep them in a separate folder from the hi-res stuff (and DSD in a separate folder too). I'm now slowly selling them all, to fund more LP purchases :)


cheers,
alex
 
Mike said:
I mainly listen to vinyl at home...call me crazy, but it's the tactile experience and sonic experience I enjoy and have for 40 years. In deciding what to listen to, I seriously just reach into a stack of albums and pull one out. Last night it was Bill Withers Live at Carnegie Hall. http://store.acousticsounds.com/d/95147/Bill_Withers-Live_At_Carnegie_Hall-180_Gram_Vinyl_Record

I listened to both LP's in the album all the way through. Throughly enjoyable.

I have 5000+ albums in Canada in my in-laws cold, dark basement. They are not organized. I really must find a way to get them down to Florida. In Florida, I have a closet full of albums organized alphabetically. I ran out of room there, so now I have one of these: https://www.lpbin.com/lpbin2 The albums in there are not in any particular order. I thoroughly enjoy just flipping through, looking at the album covers and grabbing one. If I want to find a particular album, I know where to find it. Can't find that missing sock, but I can find my albums.

I ran out of room with the LP Bin above and just bought four of these: http://waxstacks.com/ -- the price of these is a bit nuts, but I know the guy who owns the company (he used to work at DynAudio) and wanted to give him support (no, I did not get any discount).

I occasionally put on tape, but it can be a bit of a PITA. I have a lot of digital files from my ripped CD's, SACD's. They are organized by Artist/Album. I will be honest, I have some audiophile friends who absolutely hate vinyl. When they visit, you can be sure we fire up the DAC and listen to the same old sh!t: Keith Don't Go, some Dire Straits song, etc. I begin to wonder if we've lost our sheer joy of an album experience. In the old days, it was about the album. Every album was an experience. You listened beginning to end. Today, we make "playlists" and hop around songs like our fingers are on fire. Can you imagine if we watched movies in this fashion?

I do enjoy putting on a CD/SACD and listening all the way through as well, but for me, I love the whole experience of vinyl when I'm alone. I understand that people say vinyl is a hassle, but then talk about their NAS, USB Regen going into their router and switch and .... and this part isn't talking to that part....well, you get the point.

Sorry, I digressed.

P.S. you kids get off my lawn! :)
Click to expand...

Good post Mike. I really don't think tape is any more of pain in the ass than vinyl, maybe less. The added SQ quality is worth it IMO.
 
Thanks Mark. How is part 2 of your Avenger review coming? I personally think the Magnetic Platter is the biggest difference.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I have about 400-500 LPs and about 500 CDs. I use Discogs as archive. At home they are all on alphabetical order. I don't really collect vinyls I buy the music I know I like and will listen to.
 
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