Music Collections: How Do You Store Yours?

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Originally Posted by Andre

So Alex what have you done with all those Jewel case inlays?

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The inlays in the back get removed and stored in the loft along with any digipacks or special packaging. (I find a suitable cardboard box to fill and leave it in a spare room until full) Bog standard Jewel cases go in the bin, any sleeve notes (the little booklet) stay with the actual disc, in the polythene slip case.

Only slightly annoying thing is that not all booklets have track listings, but that's where the itunes "catalogue" comes in.

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Originally Posted by Alex_UK

That's how I would love to do it, and probably could now in this house, but too much hassle really to go back (not to mention having to but probably 2,500 odd jewel cases...) By my back of a fag packet calculations, approx 70 CDs on each of your shelves, 11 full, roughly the bottom 2 make one, so let's say 12 x 70 = 840, so realistically I would need 4 of those shelf units, to allow for some growth.

Is that all of your CDs Chris, or do you have others lurking? The big problem I have with any system is when you have to shuffle everything around to add new ones... That really grinds my gears (especially for Hamish and Macca! :))

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You should add to the Grinds My Gears collection...I starting to think Hamish's idea of a thread could actually work. Actually reading all this and seeing Chris's collection there makes me think that at 41 I really ought to have more records than I do - I'd guess about 300 vinyl Lp and maybe 250 CD. Poxy, really.:)

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Originally Posted by Themis

My CDs are in the garage spanning in five big plastic (hermetically closed) boxes, in alphabetical artist order.

My collection is in there :
http://i.dell.com/resize.aspx/inspir...hero_color/295
and 3 external eSata drives

4TB of total storage (1TB used for backup and disaster recovery).

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And now we've got Professor Dimitri showing us all up with his science...;)

I still have a pretty respectable number of CD's & records back at our house in Lincolnshire. The trick of course, is to keep the shelves stocked with some slack, so you have some elbow room. When that runs out, it's simple -just move to another property in a different county on the other side of the country!

In this house, I also have a couple of hundred CD's in this room where the PC is. I play these through the Standac, Yamaha receiver & some old Tannoy Mercurys. My daughter also might usually have a good pile of my discs & there will also be a heap in the car too!

There is some room to expand the shelving in the pictures a little, especially on the vinyl side - good job too, as I seem to have stepped up a gear recently on the vinyl purchases! There's also a long run along the bottom of the vinyl shelves where I have a load of components boxed & unboxed that could be moved if necessary - a few amps, some tuners, a phono stage......

I realise to my shame that having asked Alex how goes about storing/cataloging his collection, I have not had the courtesy to reply.

Apologies Alex - let me correct matters now. I must say that with your superb collection, storing them the way you do does seem to be a neat and practical way of doing it. I loath and detest the fragile jewel cases, but discarding them in favour of plastic sleeves is a step too far for me. Anyway I only have fraction of the CDs you have: 800 at the last count with about 1000 LPs.

I also admire what you and Dimitri have done: store the CDs onto hard-disc, with backup (!). Wish I knew more about computer audio to do this myself.

Regarding cataloging, I'm afraid I have to split my collection up into genre: classical; world; jazz; blues; rock and pop and a section for the 'odds and sods' which cannot be classified (compilations, samplers, spoken word). Within each genre the artist is filed alphabetically (by last name) and chronologically. This is not foolproof - what does one do about cross-over artists, or classical compositions? Not perfect, but a system I can live with.

Regards

Alex, I haven't even read the thread yet but the pictures in your first post are fantastic. This is exactly what I wanted to do, but instead I decided to rip everything to the mac and store my cd's in boxes under the bed.

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Originally Posted by Stratmangler

Ah, but then you get into the decision of alphabetically by forename or surname, which can have huge consequences for what goes where.;)

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Simple. By Surname. I fix all the sorting in iTunes too so it works that way.

My collection is in here:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4073/...ac3b4d2660.jpg
Lossless

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4143/...abee75c6b5.jpg
All music


...still rippin'

I friend of mine has almost 4000 CD's stored over 4 six foot high book shelf units.
They are catalogued by the date they were purchased. New ones go to the end of the last shelf.

Surprisingly, he can find anything you ask for almost immediately.

Nice idea for a thread :)

Here goes with some of mine ;) Alphanumeric all the way..

http://i939.photobucket.com/albums/a.../CDsDVDs-1.jpg

Yes i even have racks above the door :lol:

http://i939.photobucket.com/albums/a...yDVDsCDs-1.jpg

I just need to make a few more now :eek: You know how it is, it never ends :doh: