CD Organization

[Brandon Martus]

Hah. You probably thought I meant 'CD' as in Chief Delphi. Nope, not this thread.

I buy lots of music CDs. I rip them all, and then (semi-)neatly organize them alphabetically by artist. The problem comes when I buy a new CD, and have to shuffle the whole collection around to fit onto the bookshelf. I hate playing CD-Jenga whenever I buy new CDs.



My question to you guys, being smart FIRST students, engineers, coaches, etc .. Do you keep your music collection this organized? If so, do you have a better way that you'd want to share with people? Any custom shelves or store-bought wonders that I haven't heard of?

I know the easy solution would be to just keep them unorganized, but when I want to read the liner notes to my Underoath or Copeland CD, I don't want to be looking through hundreds of cases trying to spot them.

Thanks.

[Billfred]

My personal CDs: get chucked somewhere...I hardly ever use the CD cases. (I hardly ever use the CDs themeselves, at that!)

WUSC's CDs: Get organized pretty much like that, except ours are stacked vertically on shelves, which make them easier to slide over. I once reorganized the local section, and I had to move some from the end of one shelf to the start of the next--no problem.

(And it scales well, too. I'll get a picture sometime.)

[KyleGilbert45]

You could always buy one of these PC Controlled CD Organizer

Unfortunately it only has a 75 CD capacity so you would have to buy a few and w/ them being 100 dollars that could get kinda expensive.

[Brandon Martus]

Originally Posted by Billfred

except ours are stacked vertically on shelves

I would've done vertically, but I didn't have enough room to do so and keep them all on there. I can see how that would be easier, though.

[Jay H 237]

Originally Posted by Brandon Martus

I would've done vertically, but I didn't have enough room to do so and keep them all on there. I can see how that would be easier, though.

If you add shelves in between the existing ones (there's plenty of room) you could double the space you currently have and arrange them vertically. Billfreds right, having them vertically is MUCH easier to move them. I have my 400+ cds arranged vertically and I do the same thing he mentioned, just slide them down when you add a new one.

Just stay away from anything that has fixed dividers between the cds. With dividers you can't just slide them down, you'd have to physically remove each one to shift them down. Not fun.

[Wetzel]

Mine are stacked all over my room. I rip them then put them on a stack somewhere. Not at all helpful in the organization way. I do keep all my DVDs alphabetical, but I only have ~130, so thats easy to do. I store them vertical on shelves that are a few inches taller then the cases.

One thought I just had was to make sections of correspond to a letter, and just alphabetize by the first letter. My local used CD store keeps the majority of their cds sorted by genre and then first letter of the band.

A guy I worked with put them all into cd binders, and he had 10 mostly full 200 cd cases.
He put A-C in the first one, D-F in the next and so on. He left every 5th page or so blank as room to grow on. Worked well for him.

He was a good guy to ask if a customer knew what they wanted but couldn't explain it in a way for me to find it.




Wetzel

[greencactus3]

i dont use cds(music) but mds (minidisks.)
so they dont take as much room. like one md case is about 1/4 of a cd case... well just a bit bigger.... and i used servotape to stick all the cases on my wall. so i organize them alphabetically and its easy to find. downside, hafta re organize them all everytime i get a new one. espescially in the middle of the alphabet... i kinda cheat and add more in the front & back. so its not tooooooo bad. at the most i only hafta rearange half my collection

[EddieMcD]

It's called the MP3 format. Learn it, love it, and remember to feed it three times a day.

Seriously, rip everything you have into MP3 format, and put them on standard CD-Rs (still in MP3 format). You could fit 200 songs on one disk. That's ~20 albums on one disk. Last step: get a CD player that plays MP3s.

If you still want to keep all the goodies that come with them, there are two ways you could do this. Either develop your own Dewey Decimal System (you could even tie it into your computer) for the booklets (if the majority come with booklets), or remove and/or cut out all the info/goodies you want to keep, and make your own booklets to fit in with your burned MP3 CD (which means you'll most likely need the large CD cases). Either way, your CD stack would be between 5%-10% the size it was before. Finally, just put the original CDs in a couple spindles in case you lose a song somewhere.

Though this is assuming you have one looonng rainy-day with nothing better to do.

[Elgin Clock]

Originally Posted by EddieMcD

Though this is assuming you have one looonng rainy-day with nothing better to do.

And.. when this particular forum has no posts in it. Just kidding.

You need some "me" time Brandon.. Seriously...

What about that Reo Speedwagon/Styx cruise? You ever do that?

If not, and if that comes around again, and if you want someone who will go with ya, look me up. That's a lot of "if's". Blah!!

[Wetzel]

Originally Posted by EddieMcD

It's called the MP3 format. Learn it, love it, and remember to feed it three times a day.

blah blah blah

Originally Posted by Brandon

I know the easy solution would be to just keep them unorganized, but when I want to read the liner notes to my Underoath or Copeland CD, I don't want to be looking through hundreds of cases trying to spot them.

It seems that most people are missing a critical objective here. He wants to orginize the cases to be able to access the liner notes.

Brandon, anyway you look at it, it's a time consuming process to maintain a constantly expanding collection in order.

Wetzel

[Elgin Clock]

Mine are arranged as follows:

All good Cd's and what not are in a case in my car, and burned one's are in a visor CD holder that is surprisingly not attached to the visor.

The rest are in a cabinet, as well as the empty cases of the one's in my car.

Most are in order, but then again, I only buy Cd's maybe once a month if that.

If you do decide to do the vertical organization thing, be careful of having to many in the rack. If they are all floating system, where you can move them all up and add a CD that begins with the letter "R" in there, then after about a hundred or so Cd's you may be straining to move them up to put one CD in there.. Think "Z".

What you need is an anti-matter cabinet that resizes itself as things are put in there, so it is always the perfect size.

Sorry Brandon. I can draw that up in CAD, but good luck having someone make it..

Darn manufacturing.

<note to self, I'd love to get my hands on Brandon's music server.. lol>
Wait, what kind of music is on there? Maybe not.. Just kidding, btw.

[Zzyzx]

One way to make it better organized would be to have separate areas for every genre, and then you only have to worry bout the jenga within that genre. Of course, if you only listen to one genre, then it's useless.

If you are only worried about the little liner notes within the cases, then maybe just organizing the liner notes outside of the cases would be the best idea. Would certainly reduce the amount of space taken.

[Joel J]

Originally Posted by Brandon Martus

Hah. You probably thought I meant 'CD' as in Chief Delphi. Nope, not this thread.

I buy lots of music CDs. I rip them all, and then (semi-)neatly organize them alphabetically by artist. The problem comes when I buy a new CD, and have to shuffle the whole collection around to fit onto the bookshelf. I hate playing CD-Jenga whenever I buy new CDs.



My question to you guys, being smart FIRST students, engineers, coaches, etc .. Do you keep your music collection this organized? If so, do you have a better way that you'd want to share with people? Any custom shelves or store-bought wonders that I haven't heard of?

I know the easy solution would be to just keep them unorganized, but when I want to read the liner notes to my Underoath or Copeland CD, I don't want to be looking through hundreds of cases trying to spot them.

Thanks.

Wow.. database them! Every new CD that comes in gets entered into a database (cd name, artist, blah). Whatever id number you get from the insert becomes the id printed on the cd. You then sort the physical CDs by id number .

Ok, maybe thats overkill. But, for starters, you could arrange the CDs horizontally like books, allowing you to alphabetize and index them with bookmarkers (a piece of paper that says 'A'...'Z'). When you get a new CD, you just place it in the space you reserved for new CDs at each letter of the alphabet, and everything shifts over.

[Brandon Martus]

Originally Posted by Joel J.

Wow.. database them! Every new CD that comes in gets entered into a database (cd name, artist, blah). Whatever id number you get from the insert becomes the id printed on the cd. You then sort the physical CDs by id number .

Ok, maybe thats overkill.

That's a tempting idea.

I wonder if I could get it to integrate with Delicious Monster. I suppose I'd need to buy Delicious Monster .. and a new Apple computer .. to find out. I've always wanted to catalog the CDs in a database, though. Hmm.

[Dorienne]

I use what I call a big CD case (see below attachments). =D It's very fun. Problem is, I'm lazy and put things in the wrong places. Many compellation CDs are scattered. Buut I still am able to find the CD I want easily. It's all good in the end.
Don't worry Brandon, you'll find organization for those eventually! I'd recommend putting the CDs themselves in cases, alphabetically or however you like, then put the separate CD cases the CDs came in in a bag or whatnot, and put them in a closet or in the attic or whatnot. It's so much easier if you're a big organization freak. =)
Good luck with all that, Brandon!