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.)

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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!

[Arefin Bari]

Wow Brandon, you got lots of Cds... well i would be worst person to take idea from about organizing... all my cds are around my room, including floor, bed, desk, workdesk, closet... i also have cds inside the car... including the trunk of the car... but some things like GEARS, MOTORS, ALUMINUM PLATES, DRILL GEARBOXES, LIL ROBOTS, EDUBOTS... they are all organized and i know exactly where they are...

[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.

[Kyle Fenton]

There are many types of organizations that you can do with a libary that big

1. I know some people organize their CDs in Library Card Catalog fashion, where they sort there CDs in some sort of fashion in draws, so they can easily find them.

2. I have seen people use CD rotundas (I don't know the exact name of this device), which is a circular devise that when you input a number, it spins around until it drops the CD to you. It is very compact and can hold a lot of CDs in it. The downside to this that you can't put your Jewel cases in it.

3. You can also buy a CD rack which is a rack where you can insert your jewel cases on an angle, and you can store a lot of them. I know that this isn't a very good description, but when I get a picture I will post it.

4. Or you can just do what I do and just rip all of your CDs on your computer and put them on your iPod, and just store the CDs away.

[Brandon Martus]

Originally Posted by Kyle Fenton

4. Or you can just do what I do and just rip all of your CDs on your computer and put them on your iPod, and just store the CDs away.

I do rip them all. Most of my CDs have only been out of the case once. Every one in the picture I displayed is ripped and on my server. I just like to go back and view the liner notes often, so I don't want to dig through boxes or anything.

[Zzyzx]

You can always just go through the liner notes and scan them into you're computer, then you can organize the files by artist and album title. And with the new iPod Photo, you can veiw them anytime you want!

[konefku]

Copying them to your computer and using iTunes would be a good thing to do

[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