How Do You Organize Your Music?

Does anyone use color-coding by album cover?

LP's - alphabetically - separate section for classical
CD's - alphabetically - separate section for classical
Cassettes - prerecorded ones by color of the case and home made ones by type of tape
8 tracks - are only for posterity

Great question! I have built an 8000+ LP collection over 30 years, and I have only 2 sections: Comedy and everything else. No joke. I have tried to get all the artists together, i.e. the Fleetwood Macs, Stones, George Harrisons LPs, etc all together, and one label, Blue Notes' all together, but I never had time to do it more orderly as it grew and grew. I know where a particular record is by sheer memory - a mental map of my collection gets me to my favorite record or one a friend might need. I know it sounds insaine, but it is what time permits given the overwhelming volume. Thought I'd share this w/ everyone.

Weird Experiment: Currently my stuff is organized by record label, makes sense if your stuff is mostly jazz or classical:

ECM, bluenote, verve, reprise, DG, London, etc... I used to work at a record store where the classical was arranged by label and catalog number - you haad to get the Schwann catalog to find anything - pretty lame actually.

I'll probably change back to genra/artist some day. Actually now that everything is ripped to the mac/appleTV box, it doesn't matter. I don't touch the CDs anymore.

Jazz CDs are alphabetical, pop/rock and clasical are localized in specific drawers, but thats it. This of course drives my wife insane because she knows neither the names of the artists or what genre they are in so she can find nothing.

Vinyl has no organization whatsoever, except that the things I listen to a lot always wind up on the right and the stuff I don't listen to all that often ends up on the left. In other words 'chaotic'.