Organizing Music CD's??

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I’m getting overwhelmed by music CD’s. Any handy storage tips or gadgets to keep them all organized? Or alphabetized without having to reshelve the whole collection each time you get a new CD? Any tips, ideas or suggestions would be appreciated! Thanks!

Kevin
 
It might not be quite what you're after, but I'd seriously consider getting an iPod and storing all your music in it. Then you can pack your CDs away somewhere safe, and not have to worry about organising them (or the space they occupy in your lounge room!).
 
Convert CDs to MP3.

Convert all your CDs to MP3 and use MP3 player with big hard disk (Creative Zen has 60GB for 1000 CDs). In this way all songs on all CDs are accessible and organized. Then when you buy the new CD first of all convert it and then hide in a safe place as a backup.
TesTeq
 
Re: Organizing Music CD's??

rogaine_warrior said:
Or alphabetized without having to reshelve the whole collection each time you get a new CD? Any tips, ideas or suggestions would be appreciated! Thanks!
Click to expand...

I store CDs on shelves rather than in holders with individual slots. Picture the way libraries store books on shelves with a holder at one end, leaving extra room for new books to be added in the appropriate place.

I like the Elfa storage system, sold at The Container Store, The Great Indoors, and elsewhere, for media storage. The media storage shelves are appropriately narrow; you can configure the shelves so as not to waste any space. I retrofitted part of a coat closet with this type of system.

-andersons
 
I agree with the comments re: digitizing the music - I am in the process of doing this myself. But if you want to keep access to the CDs - what about just numbering the atual CD case and keeping these in numerical sequence and then cross-correlate to a listing in a file or spreadsheet that is fully searchable against artist, title etc. This way, each time you get a CD you just need to add it to the end of the sequence and update your list accordingly i.e. no need for re-arranging.

Paul
 
Re: Convert CDs to MP3.

tulipcowgirl said:
We've recently chucked all of our jewel cases.
We use: True-Core binder boxes http://www.lightimpressionsdirect.c...ping?Dsp=20200&PCR=30000:100000:103000:103300
with cd sleeve pages: http://www.maxcdwallet.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=detail&id=93462&product=95
The sleeve holds 4 cds with booklets on the opposite side.

We have about 4 boxes now. Instead of a piece of furniture.
Click to expand...

I did this as well (with CaseLogic though)--however it's not the perfect solution because there's no *slot* or area to store the back-covers of the CDs.

TesTeq said:
Convert all your CDs to MP3 and use MP3 player with big hard disk (Creative Zen has 60GB for 1000 CDs). In this way all songs on all CDs are accessible and organized. Then when you buy the new CD first of all convert it and then hide in a safe place as a backup.
TesTeq
Click to expand...

I've been doing this w/ my CD collection as well. just curious but what encoding do you people use? I've been doing it at 192 kbs.

(And and just another tip, Windows Media Player 10 has a built in CD-ripper/MP3 converter-- you just need to go into the settings because the default encoding is wma.)
 
Re: Organizing Music CD's??

My wife is a music teacher and I’m an avid music and music teacher lover. :wink: We’re both very obsessive and compulsive about our disc collections which numbers in the 4 digit range. In a nutshell we’re using an OCD approach as in Organizing, Cataloging and Digitizing. In this case the other meaning for OCD applies as well. Since music is her life and a huge part of my lifestyle, the amount of time and energy we’re spending to organize our collections is worth it to us. It might not be for you. Hopefully you’ll at least come away with some useful tips and information.

Organizing – We actually have different organization methods for our Music, Audio Books/Programs and Software CDs. I’ll primarily focus on Music CDs. Basically we take the disc, inserts and covers out of their cases and transfer them to sleeves that can hold all of these items. We use sleeves and trays from Discsox which can get a bit pricey. CDs are then organize by Genre/Artist except for Classical Music which is organized by Composer. More details at discsox.com.

Cataloging – We use Readerware which is a Barcode scanning and inventory management system to catalog our CDs. The library check in/out function works well since my wife frequently lends out music to her students. It’s pretty affordable and runs on Windows, Mac, Linux and Palm. More details at readerware.com.

Digitizing – We have 3 Macs, 2 Windows PCs, and a recently retired Linux PC. For ease of use, integration and support for both Windows and Mac it’s iTunes, iTunes & iTunes. For portable playback it’s iPod, iPod & iPod. You could fill several forums and books on this. We use to rip to MP3 and now use AAC (MP4) format as our default. We’re also in the process of beefing up our storage and would like to rip at least our Classical Music to some lossless encoding format, though not sure which one just yet. More details at iTunes.com.

Hope this helps!

-OCD Musik Freek :twisted:
 
Re: Convert CDs to MP3.

remyc88 said:
I've been doing this w/ my CD collection as well. just curious but what encoding do you people use? I've been doing it at 192 kbs.
Click to expand...

In my opinion 192 kb/s is for highest quality music. 128-160 kb/s is adequate for pop music.

TesTeq
 
Digitizing is the only way to go...

I too recommend digitizing them. Our CDs are in the attic packed away.

We used iTunes (which is free) to rip the content from them and put them on our main computer. Then we can sync it to our portable mp3 players or wirelessly broadcast them via our home network.

It's definitely reduced the clutter in our home. Our next project is to do the same with our DVDs.
 
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