Album Storage

By genre, then alphabetically. I go by last name of the composer for classical and by last name of the artist for other genre. For groups, I go by the name of the group (e.g., for "Jethro Tull" use "J").

For LPs with works by multiple composers or with multiple artists, pick one. (E.g., in my collection, "Armstrong & Ellington" is filed under "Armstrong" for example. Why? An accident of history because I had more Louis Armstrong recordings than Duke Ellington recordings once upon a time.)

The important thing is to use a system that makes sense for you, that you can apply with as much consistency as practical, and that will allow you some success in finding the album your looking for without a prolong search through your shelves. My process still depends on a searchable database to find some LPs: a field in the database is "Filed Under" to tell me where I hid the thing. :-)
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by geography....Memphis,San Francisco,Seattle,Chicago, Detroit,etc....Even make distinctions for bands from Flint(as opposed to Detroit)

Alphabetically, last name of artist or first letter of group name, excluding the word "the " of course.

So Theo, if you exclude the word "the", how would you file the rock group "The The" then?
:-)

I file mine by the same method as Rushton.

By assigned number, generated when the album is cataloged in the Collector data base program. Most albums are stored in the dry basement on shelves. About 100 titles are in the music room at any one time. Since in total I have about 10,000 albums, all type of media, one day the basement will need its own basement.

Completely unorganized! (Seriously). This way I can go to my "record store" anytime and find something new. (I have thousands of cds and lps). Even better, I get to buy the same piece over and over if I forget I own it!

By genre, & then alphabetical, by last name of the artist, or composer in the case of classical music. Personally I have it divided by 6 genres: classical, jazz, rock/pop, blues, country, & comedy.

You could look at the film version of "High Fidelity", where John Cusak has some super-involved system for storing his LP's, & then changes it after his G/F leaves, to some other crazy system based on his personal history I think. The guy is real dedicated tho, has all of his LP covers in outer poly sleeves, etc.....

Isn't it fun to be a demented music nut/collector? :-)

I think he organized them by mood.

What do you do for Classical when you have multiple composers on a single LP/CD. For example, a collection of Marches or a Concert etc. I am currently reorganizing my LP collection for this reason.

Dgad, my solution for classical LPs with multiple composers is to file one of three ways: 1) under the composer whose work on the LP has the greatest significance for me, or 2) file under the composer already taking up the most space on the shelves, or 3) when there are a whole host of composers with many short works, file under a generic category (e.g., "Baroque," "Brass," "Marches," "Renaissance"). In the generic groupings (#3), I'll typically sort by label.
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Random alphabetically by color.

Rushton,

Thanks. I will use by category which is how it is looking. Originally it was by most significant piece but I often end up looking for things this way.

Genre/last name- Works for the library!

For classical - I like to arrange them chronologically by the year of the composer's birth . . . then within each composer I arrange in order of increasing ensemble size. Then there are a few extra small sections for related stuff . . . i.e. all the renaissance choral compilations, all of the electronic/electro-acoustic stuff, all of the albums that feature a performer more than a composer, etc. etc.

I like the end result to generally group similar stuff together, and to be interesting and relaxing to browse through. Alphabetical is stressfull . . . best reserved for filing bills and such.

Hi Kirkus, I'll bet your organization scheme does nicely promote browsing through the collection. My alphabetical approach certainly does not lend itself to browsing through similar musical material. I've thought from time to time about reorganizing around time period and genre to better enable casual browsing, but I think the collection is too far gone to change now. Still, it sounds like a user-friendly organizational scheme to consider.
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By special groups of interest:

Avant-Classical, Avant-Jazz, Avant-Rock..etc.

I worked in a record store for 5 years in the late 90's and here were the breakdowns:

LPs:
Rock (basically 50's to mid 80's)
Metal (always an argument whether to put Sabbath in here or rock)
Alternative/Punk (all punk/new wave/alternative/indie)
Soul (R&B...I hated this term)
Country
Jazz
Blues
Comedy
Classical
Avant/Noise
Industrial
12" singles (techno, dance, house, etc.)
Misc. Gems (spoken word, crazy religious records, and foreign recordings...they may have created a world music section now).
7" (avant/punk&alt/rock/country)

I won't bore you with the CDs but they were similar but heavily weighted towards alternative and punk. We also had a large used section which was alphabetical by artist.

There were artists that always posed problems due to genre and name. Ex: where to you put Reverend Horton Heat? Anyway, it was fun times.

There are a number of excellent software programs available for storing playback media. I use CD Trustee that stores CDs & LPs. I can create scores of print outs using many differing criteria. For a quick look , view www.base40.com. Some of the reviewers @ Stereophile use this program , but as stated many others abound some with optional bar-code scaners that that makes storage / cataloging a breeze.

Kurt Tank
Under "T" for "The" using the second "the" not the first "the". Although I have no "the The" albums, but if I did I would use "T" for "The" not "the" as the first response may have confused the situation with The The.

In Asian music stores, they are organized alphabetically by the first letter of the first word - including "The."

Anyone know of a good software program for cataloging records on a Mac?

LIFO
(or is that LO-FI)

Marty

I use Collectorz for Mac. It is relatively easy to bar code in CDs. Like most of these programs, entering LPs is more labor intensive. This summer, I paid my teenage son per click and got my 2000 LPs and CDs into the data base (excluding classical LPs) and he saved enough money for an electric guitar.

I don't mind the data entry, I have already done it in an Excel file. I was just wondering if there was a good program out there (perhaps LP specific) that does not rely on the barcodes, as this Collectorz seems to, at least from glancing at the website. Something that I could just dump my Excel file into and then organize it and search it however I wanted.

A Google search did not turn up anything useful, at least for me, about LIFO? Can you be more specific?

I've been using Movie Collector and Music Collector for at least 5 years and they are very solid. DVD's and CD's are a breeze, LP's are a bit more difficult but not bad. I don't use a scanner, just enter the title and let the program search the internet for the correct data. They use the normal music sources like Amazon.com, but also have a huge database that are constantly updated by the users. Less than 1% of my records don't get a hit and I just enter them manually.