How do you arrange the order of your records?

I have them broken down into large genre groups--Classical, Jazz, Pop/Rock, and for Classical it is alphabetical by composer (I have cross reference index for records with multiple composers), the rest by primary performer.  I have too many records to go with random.  I use a similar approach for CDs (the physical copies anyway), which are all ripped to a server and are more readily accessible because one can search in a number of ways to find the file for the CD on the server.

Alphabetically how Discogs list them on the app

have around 12k records.

i break it down a number of ways; i have a separate section for 12" 45rpm pressings, and a separate section for Mono pressings. also box sets are mostly all together.

the bulk of my collection; my non box set stereo 33 rpm records, are generally broken down into (1) pop/rock/folk (by artist alphabetically), (2) Jazz/blues (by artist), and (3) classical (by composer).

there are a few special sections from one label, and i have a special section for rec’s from one friend of mine who knows current pop music separated from the general pop/rock..

i can find most records in 15-30 seconds. with some classical i recall how the album cover looks, or remember something, but can’t find stuff quickly as i’m learning classical. just bought a 3000 classical pressing collection last fall, so i plan on learning more. learning about music is one of the joys of vinyl. some degree of organization helps.

I used to keep my LPs in strict alphabetical band/performer order as you often found in most shops.

Apart from the few classical, which went in at the end. I didn't mind mixing jazz, punk, folk etc all together, but for some reason classical had to be kept apart.

Now when it comes to digital recordings, I can’t find any satisfactory method of arranging them.

Probably A-Z again by default, but I increasingly listen more and more to playlists these days eg pop, rock, best of’s, fast, slow etc.

Albums are stored record shop style so I can flip through them (but without any separators.) I could not do library style, bent over reading spines. It would drive me crazy 🤪

Main groupings are classic rock, jazz, blues, folk, female vocals, male vocals, soundtracks, and classical. Each artists’ records are filed together but in no particular order.

This will be a long thread and will rapidly become repetitious.  Like others, I organize by genre first and then alphabetically according to musician, if jazz, R&B, or other.  If Classical, by composer.  If movie sound track, by movie title.

My post was removed but what I attempted to say in a somewhat comical way was: My recordings are just thrown in the closet with the top rotation records on the top of the pile. If I have to dig deep, it's 20 minutes minimum. I wish I was better organized but that is just not me. 

Single and double vinyl albums are divided between Classical, and Pop/Rock/Jazz. If I've got a bunch of a composer's records I'll divide those up between symphonies, piano concertos, etc. Then I've got a shelf devoted to Musicals, Soundtracks, MOR & Hi-Fi Test/Demo records which I mostly inherited from my dad. Finally, a shelf of Classical Vinyl Box Sets such as operas & symphonies. The Classical is largely alphabetical by composer but, of course, this is not always possible. The 45s, of course, are lined up in that shoe box. My pitiful collection of ten inch 33's lean against a wall.

Groups by nothing within. Jazz, rock, blues, classical, misc.

By Genre and then Alphabetical. 

Not really focused on selecting any particular record, I wonder how you super organized fellows choose what to listen to. Someone mentioned "rotation".

Are favorites placed in separate places? Are particular ones kept in mind among the organized? Or is it still a matter of flipping through and picking one?

Eg.: "I think I will listen to some Jazz." And then think of an artist? How can one remember titles among 12K??

By genre and decades and somewhere things get mixed up but that is the fun of it.

just bought a 3000 classical pressing collection last fall, so i plan on learning more. learning about music is one of the joys of vinyl. 

@mikelavigne , holy cow. Was this from an estate sale or an individual abandoning vinyl for digital? No matter, what a find.

I stream Qobuz to find classical music worth owning.

holy cow. Was this from an estate sale or an individual abandoning vinyl for digital? No matter, what a find.

@lowrider57 just one of those things. i happened to be looking at ebay and saw this classical collection for bid. the guy lived in N.J. and had purchased it from a Grammaphone Reviewer 20 year ago. a wide variety of classical music, with the focus on performance and not the most desired pressings. but a few gems here and there. and the condition is pristine almost 100%.

i messaged the seller and made an offer, turned out he knew me (i did not know him) from the forums and he accepted my offer. it came in 46 boxes on two pallets. 1800 pounds. a lifetime of investigations for me. and it was what he said it was. and i paid a fair price too.

yes, a ’find’.

Nice story, Mike.

Fantastic, @mikelavigne . Since they're from a reviewer I'll bet many of them were only played once. 

mike -- if he's there, go about it the right way and start with contemporary Dutch composer Michel van der Aa.

I have categories: rock, jazz, classical, blues, and female vocalist (female vocalist itsis vestigial). I need to disperse this into the main categories). Then alphabetic. I usually know what I feel like hearing, then go to find it. So this system works for me.

400 or so pristine 78s and 1000 or so 33 and 200 45s. Many of the 78s are still in the Book albums. The 33 are in ALL conditions including frisbee and wall art.

3 types of records and I play about 30 albums at the most. I have 10 or 12 I listen to when I listen. Two more years, I retire. I can't wait.

I'm A-Z. My select 30 stay out. I'm playing Linda Ronstadt as I type. I'm lazy, I like a hard drive with a FAT. It sure is quicker.

WHY do I keep going back? It's time for a meeting. VA, Vinyl's Anonymous. I need help. Vinyl deprogramming? I had my 6 month pin a few times. I keep falling off the stoop.

I arrange them by the run out numbers, it's complicated but interesting

It says something about this forum that this is the most popular post today.

mike -- if he’s there, go about it the right way and start with contemporary Dutch composer Michel van der Aa.

@edcyn zero Michel van der Aa in the collection. the collection is classical, not sure he does classical composition. i'm into modern classical, and avant-garde pieces. so i will look. 

and looking on Discog, he only has one cut on one live double Lp album. based your suggestion, i did buy it.

when i venture into my streaming again i will look him up.

Random - with the most recent played in a pile!

Alphabetically by first name of a band but by last name if it's a person's name. 

eg, The Black Crowes is before Jackson Browne. ("the" doesn't come into play with my system)

Genre, then artist with the exception of a section containing about 50 of my current, go-to albums with the most recently played disks on the right, so I can mix it up a bit and not over-expose any to the point it needn't be in the go-to section.

Chaos.  Hunt and discover.  1500 vinyl and 3500 cds,  all CDs displayed horizontal so the titles can be read in the storage drawers and rack.  If I want a specific disc, I stream it via Quobuz or Idagio.  Hi-rotation CDs make a small pile in a shelf.  I do not have the energy to create an organization.  Having search the vinyl so many times, I have a rough idea where some records are. 

Three groups, single album by Artist/alpha, and multiple albums by Artist/alpha/order of release all mixed genre. Jazz in its own territory.

My LP collection I divided into categories: Comedy/Spoken Word; Folk/Ethnic Music; Show Tunes/Original Cast/Soundtrack Albums; Classical; Jazz; Rock/Pop, all alphabetical within each section. From the start with my CD collection, I just lumped all music CDs together alphabetically, the only ones separated out into a separate category being spoken word. I store CDs in Leslie Dame spinner towers that hold 1000 discs apiece, of which I now have four, the fourth half full at this point. My greatest eccentricity is that I sort discs alphabetically right to left instead of left to right like a Christian, as if you stacked them on top of each other and turned them on their side. I sort my books the same way. Why I started doing it this way is lost to the fog of time except that it just seemed logical to me.

This topic comes up here fairly regularly. Over the years of amassing LP’s (and/or CD’s), everyone finds what works for them. As long as you can find what you want, it doesn’t matter, does it? Unless you want your arrangement to make a statement about you. ;-)

When I started out I separated Rock, Blues, Country, Jazz, ---and of course Classical (how could one not?). That didn’t last long. What’s the point of separating by genre? For those moments when you’re in the mood for, say, Blues, but don’t know what to play, needing to "browse"? That’s not how I relate to music.

My racks are genre-free: alpha by artist, then chronological. Various artists comps by title. Classical alpha by composer, then composition title and number (concertos, sonatas, symphonies, etc.), and finally performer (for those compositions of which I have multiple interpretations).

The only exception I make is for the catalogues of certain audiophile labels, ones known more for the sound than the music: Sheffield, Reference Recordings (some titles are exceptions), Chesky (ditto), Wilson, etc. "Audiophile" reissues (MoFi, Analogue Productions, Speakers Corner, Intervention, etc.) are in with the non-audiophile pressings.

If you were here and let’s say you wanted to hear Miles Davis kind of Blue LP, better give me at least an hour, maybe 2, to locate it lol...records all stored randomly with absolutely no rhyme or reason. There are just too many of them and it would be too daunting a task to organize them all. I could basically open my own record shop with all the LP’s I own. Whenever I say to myself to stop collecting or buying, I see something else that I like or have been looking for and buy it. It most likely will not end. It's not as if my collection is strewn about the floor in a chaotic mess, they are in fact neatly stored in a variety of ways. Some on wall hanging shelves, some on floor standing shelves, others in countless record crates on the floor in several rooms etc...

@mikelavigne 8 tons of records! My hat is off to you sir.

My organizer of choice is Roon.

I have only 2 categories….Classical, and Everything Else.
Classical is alphabetical by composer, with solo instrumental followed by chamber, concertos, symphonies, choral/oratorio/opera for each composer. 

EE is by band name or artist last name, and release date.

Only 3K or so, so I keep 'em in random order (with the exception of a few set runs such as Venus Jazz and Music Matters, which I keep together just for the heck of it).  Otherwise I just ignore everything more than a year old unless I really want to find something, which I might be successful at before I die.

@mrskeptic Thank you! I'm not the only one! 😀 I call it my OCD. The only downside is Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers ends up separated from Petty, Tom. I can live with it.

Yeah I have oddball things in their own little sections (Box sets, cleaning queue, 7", the few Rap or Classical LP) but the rest in alphabetical order.

As mentioned above, putting 78 Shellac records in their own section seems like a good idea as well. They require different playback gear. I don't own any but that was good food for thought.

I have been using CLZ Music app to identify the ‘bin’ location of each album. It took me sometime to key in my library of physical media but it was worth it. Saved me a huge headache of physical organization :-) 

I keep them in order by how I know the album. Most are by artist but things like 1812 Overture are grouped together no matter who the artist is.

And I have a deck of punched cards where each card has the album info punched in it. I wrote a COBOL program to list the deck in different sequences. Hard to run the program these days. 😊

Like has been said already, I first organize by major genre.  Then by artist's last name if it's a solo artiest, or if it's a band, the first word of the band name, ignoring articles like "the".  Fortunately I don't own any albums by The The, because I'd have no idea where that would go...

Maybe a more important question is this: If you use outer sleeves, which way does the opening face?  Up, down, sideways same direction as the sleeve opening, sideways opposite sleeve opening... 😀

Alphabetical by band/artist, then chronological inside that.

Jazz are separate as is Classical.

However, Classical is a bit of a problem isn't it?

Do you sort by composer? By conductor? By performer?

I've inherited my father's 3,400 LP collection of mostly classical. This is now an issue for me!

Help! 😄

Happy listening...

“Autobiographical”

Alphabetically by band name or artist surname and for classical by composer's name. There always some "migration" which keeps a bit of a random element in choosing what to listen to.

I would think alphabetical by genre and within each genre by artist.  You could take this further by filing them by date released by artist.

Color.

Mike, enjoy the foray into Classical recordings. Try not to get too bogged down in "best" performance, recording. Deep dive the composer while reading their biography. Many led quite interesting lives. 

Gave up "analogue" sources/media back in the 90s but I keep my CD rips and online digital purchases sorted by artist/album, in alphabetical order. Compilation albums are in their own folder, sorted alphabetically by album name. I briefly considered segregation by broad genre categories but decided it was unnecessarily complex.

Manage my music via Roon; so from a playback perspective the file organization is largely irrelevant. In my car it’s a different story. The head unit allows browsing by file location and I often use this feature to select. I normally listen to entire albums at a time.

I kind of solved my storage problem. (I started stacking horizontally)

Found that I could make room in my clothes closet. I also thought that I could make room in the garage for less important LPs.

As for organizing, I am stuck in random mode. Although the wife was just able to quickly find her favorite Andy Williams Sing Hawaiian. Think she knew the bunch.

I can’t fathom how one can deal with many thousands. I have several hundred.

Storage remains a problem. Maybe replace some book shelves. These days I don’t read much.

Performers or composers.

Relatively small collection: 930 records but growing.

Indexed alphabetical only.

Alphabetical by genre then roughly by release date.

Spouse and self don't separate on the same sort of 'sort system' setup, so a significant selection seems to dissemble into selecting something that seizes some semblance of sense.....

Good.

Now, 5X faster.