How do you store and catalog your vinyl?

@downunder, good point about the compartments in the Kallax being too wide, one reason I prefer the EKET. Each compartment in the EKET is 12-3/4" wide, still too much but acceptable. Owners of the Kallax have solved the problem of their excessive depth by installing a block inset into the back of each compartment. I also don’t like the Kallax’s open-back design, but a thin piece of plywood or melamine can be attached to the rear, closing it off.

My collection was about the size of yours when I started to organize it last year with Discogs. I got a couple of Kallax shelving units from IKEA and went to town. While organizing, I noticed two things: several records I thought I had I did not (lost in multiple moves, stolen, gotten rid of...) and I had a few records I had no idea how I got them. I quickly started culling and adding, all the while finally LISTENING to my records. Just hit 1500 this week, so beware. 

I organize first by a few categories ..... symphonies, chamber music, other orchestra, and then by composer within each group.  Then jazz, singer-songwriters, early rock, test/demo records, and misc other.  Within these I arrange alphabetically by performer.  I've got over 1200 lps, and 1100 cds, and the system works for me.

I do this because I usually choose what to listen to by category first, e.g. I fell like listening to Judy Collins tonight ... then it is easy to remember to go to singer-songwriters and find "Collins" group of discs.  Then make a choice.

A lot of great suggestions. 

On organization - here are 10 different methods to organize. I bet there is at least one way you've never thought of, and might like. I'm actually a fan of release year.

http://www.vinylmeplease.com/magazine/organizing-your-record-collection/

You sound like you are slow to jump into an app to organize. You have nothing in the world to lose trying out Discogs. Put in a couple of albums and see if you like it. There is a massive benefit to that system - the notes people have submitted are incredible. Honestly, given the love for details, I'm surprised more people didn't say Discogs as no other way to do this. 

In those Discogs listings are more details about each release than you can ever imagine. My personal favorite - runout / matrix listings. You can pretty much definitively determine which release you own. Honestly, dollar value is fun, but a lot less useful. 

And, if you are ever out buying records, you will never buy a duplicate.

uberwaltz - That's me. I have 7,000 CDs (5,500) stored in metal cabinets with custom drawers http://www.can-am.ca/  and 1,000 on shallow bookcase shelving.  The box sets are separated on top of the shelving.  These are cataloged.

The 7,000 78s and 15,000 LPs that are also cataloged are stored in built-in wall shelving units (withstood 6.9 1994 Northridge earthquake with a touch/ 1/16th inch movement at most) anchored to my 8"-12" thick double studded, double drywalled walls and 6" concrete slab with 3/4" rebar reinforcement).  

The other 10,000 LPs are mostly stored in racks bought at Costco.

As to cataloging, I use MS Word with separate categories for each genre, just like the shelved LPs/78s/CDs are placed. 
Cataloging & Shelving Categories:
1 A Orchestral by composer,
1 B Orchestral compilations by conductor,
1 C Soloist Instrumentalists,
1 D Chamber works by group name,
2 Opera Singers recitals,
3 Opera,  
4 Jazz Instrumentalists,
5 Pop/Jazz Vocalists and 1950's R&R,
6 Rock & Roll 1960's to 1980's., 
7 A Musicals by title,
7 B Film by title,
7 C Film compilations by composer,
8 A Yiddish vocalists,
8 B Hebrew vocalists,
8 C Klezmer and other Jewish instrumentalists
8 D Cantorial and
9 Comedy (I have about 800 LPs/CDs of these). 
10 SuperAnalog Japanese/other & Direct Discs There is also a miscellaneous category for storage/cataloging for super analog LPs by label such as Japanese Toshiba/EMI/Sony/etc. and direct to disc.

I put a CD symbol for CDs which are cataloged together with LP, knowing if I have one or both media of the recording.  78s are cataloged similarly but separate from the CD/LPs.  

I have slowed down my cataloging (and buying LPs, basically only CDs and CD sets now) as time does not permit it; however, I haven't cut down on my listening time.

My acquaintances who have/had 1 million or more LPs do/did not have not categorized at all or very well.  What a mish mosh as they generally didn't listen but only collect records. 

My friend with 250,000 78s used index cards and had easy shelving alphabetically by opera, vocalist, instrumentalist and conductor and LPs, all classical or jazz, similarly.  

I still cannot begin to imagine what a million records looks like in accessible storage!

Mind boggling is about as far as I have got my head round it so far

I haven't done the math, but I don't believe there are enough hours in an average persons life to listen to a million albums. And that's if you started at birth! But then, some people "collect" with no intention of listening.

You are correct...lol
If you assume 1 hour per record, non stop is approx 114 years worth.

I figured my collection would take about 4 months, non-stop, end to end.  Probably 10 years at 1.5 to 2 hours a day leisurely which is what I am doing.  I just have to get rid of 4,000 LPs and 2,000 78s in my storage shed and stop buying more.

I have two five tier glass front cabinets...
my collection of lp's is around 500 after years of "thinning the herd"!...:-)
I sort alphabetically but also have them broken down by types of music ( rock, jazz, blues etc...)

I use Discogs. I sort my physical collection as per how Discogs would sort by artist. Then I just use Discogs to find the album I want and go retrieve it. I can’t understand collections sorted by genre, decade, etc. The goal for me is to find the album quickly so I can listen to it!

Discogs does seem to have a lot of supporters.
Going to investigate while my collection is manageable!

My small collection of about 400 LPs is broken down to 4 levels: Audiophile; about 42 that are in some way specially manufactured or pressed
Special: Real favorites that are of normal manufacture.
The bulk or main collection
The upstairs collection (tings my wife likes; but I'll never play)
I sort alphabetically within those levels and physical shelves.

I started entering my collection into Discogs a few months ago. It's cool. I've learned a lot about my collection. I was doing pretty well until I got a damn job. That screwed everything up. 

I also have a spreadsheet of 'all' the different covers I have of my favorite songs. Collecting covers has been my little sub-hobby for decades. It sure got a lot easier with digital music downloads, but the vinyls are the gems.

I've also been trying to vac/wash all my LP's and I'm closer to being caught up with that than the cataloging; because it's more important and I'm not totally senile yet. I have a cheap DIY vac setup that is quite effective. I make my own solutions from a great recipe I found on Audiokarma.

2 channel.

Yep that darn job and work lark is well over rated....lol.
Gets in the way of serious music time!

Like CDs vinyl should always be stored in the vertical position. It’s hard to explain but when they are stored horizontally the sound is noticeably worse. Please, no angry 😠  emails. 

Why on earth would you expect any angry emails after that post?

😝😝😝

I’m pretty sure what I said hasn’t really sunk in yet. 

Its slow going round here.......

😗😗

I've never seen an LP collection stored horizontally. Since CD's are (mostly) in jewel cases, I doubt it matters. But it IS easier to get a CD case out if it doesn't have 10 or 20 more piled on top of it.

Where the collection of CDs is placed in the room affects the sound, too. Moving the CD collection from one location to another location several feet away can sometimes make all the difference. And paper CD cases sound better than standard plastic jewel cases, which act as resonators. For the entire bunch of CDs that’s a big honking resonator beaming up at you. But it’s much more difficult to explain why the sound is much better when all CDs are stored vertically vice horizontally. But I can certainly understand if you never really thought about it or don’t think it matters.

Oh Geoff, I thought you meant that a CD itself sounds better if stored vertically! Maybe your room benefits from horizontal diffusion (from vertically-orientated diffusors). Mine does, for planar speakers. Plastic CD jewel cases are nasty, cardboard much nicer.

But the collection of CDs in jewel cases is acting as a resonator, not a diffuser. Even if CDs are in paper cases the sound in the room will be better if vertically stored. Same with all media, even videos and books. See where I’m going with this? 😬

So, you're saying plastic jewel cases don't reflect sound waves that hit them?! The jewel case's internal volume may also resonate, but it's not either/or.

No I’m not saying that at all. But reflection doesn’t equate to diffusion. That’s is actually why I said they act as resonators, though. Everything in the room reflects. Also, even if the CDs were stored horizontally they would still reflect. But the sound would be worse.

You can control the experiment to eliminate obvious causes like diffusion and reflection. Like covering the CDs with a thick blanket. Besides, I just gave the big secret away. Don’t tell anyone. 🤫 I said all media behaves this way, I.e., store vertically.  It doesn’t have anything to do with room acoustics, well, except for the resonator part which you can eliminate with paper sleeves.

Good points, all of which I agree with of course.

I catalog my music, vinyl, cds, sacd, DVD’s on an Excel spreadsheet on my laptop and then download it to my phone. That way I have it with me when I’m buying new vinyl. Prior to doing that I was repurchasing albums I already owned. I list them alphabetically by artist, album name, media. I store my albums alphabetically as well using the Boltz LP shelves. They are very well built, easy to add additional shelves and have sturdy wheels. I think each shelf holds 180 albums. 

Lost track but that might be the first example of cataloging on Excel which is what I initially had in mind to do.

I have a problem shelving my CD box sets such as Mercury, RCA Living Stereo and Deccas with 60 CDs per box.  Also, I have many Warner and other 15 to 40 CD box sets.  The latter box sets generally fit better in my CD rack/Can-Am metal cases as they are packed into flip type boxes which are narrow and can be more easily manipulated than the long or pull up/open boxes of Mercury, RCA and Decca.  Yikes, too many CDs in long boxes.  Same with my Elvis box sets, really long and difficult to shelve.

Been a while but.

Finally got a week of downtime from work and after completing "some" of the honeydew list found time to make a start.

Decided to use Discogs as a lot of the hard work already done.

Actually quite interesting when you see where some of your vinyl came from, found I have a fair number of South American albums.

But it's a LONG haul... Lol.

At least I have made a start!

Hi,
i store them by genre followed by decade.
I have made my own excel pivot table where i can trace anything:
artist, title, genre, style, year, yer of release, comments, code, matrix, colour, weight, label, condition, country, ttl album, ttl lp, price.
Discogs was a good help especially for release dates and pricing.
It took me some time but it was fun, i will do the same for my CD collection.

After I looked over Discogs closely I decided it just was not worth the effort to create something of my own.

One of my primary goals was to have at hand information on present collection.
This way when in my LRS or thrift stores I can instantly check if i already own my proposed purchases!

The Discogs app works perfectly on my phone for that function.

Just have to complete it all....
Then my cassettes....
Then my CDs......
Then my R2R......

I "only" have about 670 LPs, but that's a huge leap from a couple years ago when I had just a few.   Storing and organizing has become a pressing problem.


I decided to use the discogs app to catalogue my collection. 



It's been a slog over the past few weeks doing this that's for sure!  But having finally finished last week I'm glad I did it.  Now I won't double-buy any more LPs (yup, done that!) and I know what all those shelves of LPs actually contain.


And now it's not egregious work to input any new LP via the app.  Most of them I buy from discogs, so it's just a matter of pressing a button "add to collection" when I receive it.    Otherwise, if it's new vinyl from somewhere else I can scan the bar code.


BTW, I've found these record dividers to be great.   They are stiff, look good, easy to write on with a white grease pencil, and I prefer the wedge-cut as it seems to take up less visual space:


https://www.amazon.com/30-Record-Divider-Cards-12NS13BK30DI/dp/B00BF7ESQY



But I face the problem of most music collectors:  How to organize, with the bedeviling issue of sub-categories.


For instance a lot of my collection is Library/Production music from the 70's/80's.  And I love synth-electronic music.



So when I have a synth-based Library album there are three possibly helpful categories I could put it in:


1. Library Music2. Electronica3. Old Synth Electronica (analog etc, a favorite genre).



In terms of physical storage, that presents a problem of which category in which to place it.


It SHOULDN'T present a problem with a good organizing app, because you'd THINK that such apps would allow you to organize via sub-categories, so I could put such albums in all three categories.  Unfortunately....and this blows my mind for an app made by the premier site for record collectors...there IS no option for sub-categories in the discogs site/app!    Talk about an annoying head-scratcher!


I've looked at other vinyl organizing apps, but unfortunately they are more cumbersome to use than the discogs app, and don't allow near the speed of inputting my collection.


So, until discogs wakes up and makes the app utility better, I'm still struggling through these issues.

Kinda cool cataloguing my collection although time consuming.

Get to learn exactly what I have as I go along and even been able to submit Three new versions that were not in the database.

Even though the monetary value is not that important , that is also amusing when I look at the value range.

Vinyl complete.
CD that I still have on shelves complete although that is maybe 10% of total I own, rest were ripped a while ago and got boxed up and placed in the outer garage loft storage area.
Suppose at some stage I will have to drag them down and catalog all of them as well. Oh joy!
Working through cassettes right now.

I have no idea how many records I have. They are all over the place but I can always find what I want. Not sure how. All the CDs are on a hard drive and cataloged in iTunes. I'd rather look at the vinyl. 

The most egregious job I ever had related to this hobby was ripping all my CDs so I could stream them and put the physical copies away.

It was such a time-consuming, mind-numbing chore that I gave up part way through, had a local "cd-ripping company" rip the last few hundred.Of course they did a crap job, getting tons of tags wrong, so I had to redo a lot there and finish off ripping more CDs.

Very glad that's behind me, and I very rarely buy CDs anymore.

Prof.

I hear you on the CD ripping, pretty soul destroying.

I limited myself to 15 to 20 a day max.
Still took forever it seemed.
And still had to go in and fix some bad tags, that was really depressing!

I must admit to having bought a LOT lately though with thrift shops near giving them away!
And they have never sounded so good as of late through my C.E.C transport.

I guess I should not be surprised but Discogs does not catalog r2r pre recorded tapes.
Oh well if they are all I have to remember I should survive.

Absolutely unbelievable!

https://www.discogs.com/Pink-Floyd-The-Dark-Side-Of-The-Moon/release/2318072

And I thought I paid a lot for it at a dive record store in Fargo, North Dakota about 3 years ago at $69!

Holy cow!

Got to say Discogs has been a lifesaver.
Or at least a money saver as my memory fades and it saves me buying the same album over and over.
While cataloging for the first time I found I had three copies of dream of the blue turtles!!

Now I also use it to randomly chose an album for me to play.
Course that’s only half the battle, it does not help me find it.... lol.
Those old jukeboxes definitely had something going  for them.

I keep it simple. I have a couple of shelves built into a wide closet especially for LP.s.All are alphabetical , separated by according to Genre. Same with CDs, which number around 500,which are all  in pullout drawers. Record collection is a bit less than 300; all used records get a thorough cleaning and at the least new rice paper sleeves,with the  best LPs getting Mofi sleeves.