Cataloguing the CD collection

[Guest]

Now that I've rediscovered my CD collection during the hours of 7am and noon, I realise that a catalogue is long overdue. I am well aware of the shortcomings of online databases when it comes to classical music and also the sheer amount of effort required ..even to create an Excel spreadsheet. I thought that I'd stumbled across the perfect program for the Mac - Delicious Library (yes, I know it's a really naff name) - as I simply hold up the barcode to the built-in camera and bingo..it reads the barcode and wanders off and gets, at times very detailed, data. However it does have disadvantages as it is dependent on the data out there and so sometimes you will find Mahler as the composer and sometimes Gustav Mahler and since it sorts alphabetically..you get the picture. However, being Mac-like, it does let you peruse your library using the cover pictures which is rather nifty.

At the end of the day, I guess, it depends on what exactly you want a computerised catalogue for. Evidence of your disks existence for insurance purposes should, Heaven forbid, you suffer a fire or a break-in ?

Delicious Library is editable but before I embark on that little exercise I just thought I'd ask..

What do you good people use?

[VodkaDilc]

http://www.bruji.com/cdpedia/

I compared this with Delicious Library before making the decision to use CDpedia. For my purposes it's ideal!

[umslopogaas]

I use Excel. Admittedly, the thought of entering my entire collection of nearly 7000 items (LPs, rather than CDs, but it makes no difference) from scratch (no, they arent) is a bit forbidding, but in fact using it hasnt bothered me because I set up the database ages ago when the collection was much smaller, then just entered every new purchase as it came along over a couple of decades. Now I've mostly stopped buying, and therefore adding, new items and the database is incredibly useful: should you (or I) wish to extract information from it I can instantly sort on any combination of Code, Number, Company, Composer, Work, Soloist, Conductor, Orchestra, Notes (nos. LPs in the box, mono or stereo, that sort of thing), Condition (ok = keep, ok ish = keep but replace if possible, replace = not acceptable but keep because its bearable and you'll never find another), Label (first = good, second etc = not good, replace if poss.). Not sure why you or I would need such anorakky info, but its there in a flash if we do. That's eleven columns, you can have as many more or less as you like. It cant be hard to set up, because I did it myself and I cannot otherwise add two plus two in Excel. And you should already have Excel for free if you've got MS Office. My database is often useful for contributing to these fora, if anyone asks a question about recordings from that era I can instantly check if I've got anything on the shelves that might be a useful source of information.

There is a problem with multi-composer discs. You can do a 'Bach JS etc' entry in the Composer column, but unless you also enter every track that is not by JSB separately, all the other non-JSB items on the disc will not be recorded. So, if you sort of remember you have a bit of music by ... oh, I dont know, Johann Nepoless Nonentitychus ... and you go looking for it, you wont find it. And life is too short to enter every track separately. Well, mine is, for sure. The problem is not so bad when its JSB and his contemporaries, because at least you've a reasonable chance of finding what you want if you home in on JSB etc, but you can really be up a gumtree if its a 'Debut recital by Fiddly Bits, our astounding new virtuoso violinist' and their first disc is a selection of short pieces from several centuries with no rationale other than Fiddly Diddly can play them. The only answer I can find is to avoid such discs, or if you must have it, go and chat up the beaming parents at the debut recital, they'll maybe give you one for free.

[gurnemanz]

I did research on this in 2006 and decided that by far the best CD database software was Orange CD Catalog. I have used it ever since and have found it to be excellent. As the owner of about 3000 discs, I have found it quite invaluable and use it on a daily basis. It is well suited to classical music and multi-composer discs mentioned above are no problem since you can enter details for tracks and albums separately. It does everything I need and is very flexible and customisable (you can add your own extra fields, if you wish). You can search by multiple fields and save the resulting queries. It is a very powerful tool. Details of all its features are here:

http://www.firetongue.com/

With one button click you can upload the database in html form to a shared site for all users and view it online wherever you have internet access.
Here's mine:

http://www.racksandtags.com/rogpo/artists/?c=1000

[amcluesent]

by far the best CD database software was Orange CD Catalog

+1 Great program for classical music CDs. As well as cataloguing CDs it'll also scan ripped music on disk and integrate with Squeezebox so you can play the music you find in the catalogue.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

+1 Great program for classical music CDs. As well as cataloguing CDs it'll also scan ripped music on disk and integrate with Squeezebox so you can play the music you find in the catalogue.

I long since gave up cataloguing my discs, though I used to do so with my LP collection. I'd rather just listen to them. The same goes for ripping them to a hard disc. It all takes too much time. I did it with my iPod, but now I wonder why I bothered. The original compact discs sound better and are extremely convenient, whatever Brennan says in order to sell his product.

[BetweenTheStaves]

....The original compact discs sound better and are extremely convenient, whatever Brennan says in order to sell his product.

You need have no worries on that score because with the abysmal (from a classical music perspective) database and one line display that you get with the Brennan, you'd never find the piece to make a comparison! The sycophantic Gramophone review was the last straw for me. Did the reviewer actually use the damn thing or did he just rely on the promotional material for his review? Ah silly me, nothing to do with the full page add in the same issue then.

The link to bruji is well worth following up, thanks. OrangeCD is PC only.

EDIT: bruji seems a close cousin to Delicious Library as it's brought in my existing DL library!

[Colonel Danby]

I started to catalogue my LP collection in 1981 on card index bought from Smugs, and then when I bought my first CD in 1986: I was one sad teenager, but it did mean that I had an encyclopaedic knowledge of my stuff, and more generally by buying the 'Gramophone' (and of course Uncle Simon at the CBSO): it stood me in good stead when I went for a job in a classical record job. It just got a little out of hand though: I had countless number of boxes for composer, soloists, conductors, orchestral members, and record label numbers etc etc. One is talking about 500 LPs, and thousands of CDs.

One day, I thought it time to get a life, and threw the whole lot in the bin. And I don't regret it for a minute.

[Dave2002]

One day, I thought it time to get a life, and threw the whole lot in the bin. And I don't regret it for a minute.

Arguably this is the best piece of advice!

I am currently embarked on a process of ripping my CD collection. It may never get finished. The theory is that most of the CDs can be stored on a few hard drives, very possibly occupying less space in total than the average shoebox. A by-product might be that a catalogue gets produced, though at present those CDs which are processed are simply imported into iTunes. Would that simply extract the same data that CDPedia and similar tools would, or is the data different? It does not seem to me clever to have to put the CDs in twice - once for iTunes or other ripping software, and once for CDPedia.

In any case, I've found the online databases are pretty much only a very rough first cut.

I found these pages from Stan Brown, who is very helpful - http://oakroadsystems.com/sitemap.htm#Info and in particular the article on iTunes - http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/itunes.htm

These do not necessarily give the best solution for anyone who is cataloguing a CD collection for general use, but they certainly highlight some of the problems and provide some solutions for iPod users. Some of the solutions are constrained because of the displays on devices such as the iPod Classic.

My guess is that there could be benefits for some people in spending time on cataloguing, but if you have more than 1000 CDs the time could perhaps be better spent on other things. It's probably going to take at least 5 minutes/CD whatever anyone says, so that's going to work out at 83 hours per 1000 CDs, or 10 weeks full time work!
That's for doing things fairly thoroughly.

A very quick method, but one which would not allow rapid access or searching, would be to spend some time with the CDs, putting them into order. Then simply photograph the ends of the CDs, and refer to the photographs when needed. A variant is to put the CDs on the floor - maybe 40 or so at a time, then take a photograph. You could probably do 1000 in an hour quite easily this way.

In the unlikely event that anyone ever produces a searchable database of CD covers, then a matching process would enable large numbers of CDs to be catalogued quickly from the images, by extracting each CD image from the resulting photograph. I don't know if this method could be coupled with the bar code look up mentioned already. That might just raise the performance level up to something usable - if it's possible to extract bar codes from images easily.

It'll almost certainly never happen!

[Bryn]

I long since gave up cataloguing my discs, though I used to do so with my LP collection. I'd rather just listen to them. The same goes for ripping them to a hard disc. It all takes too much time. I did it with my iPod, but now I wonder why I bothered. The original compact discs sound better and are extremely convenient, whatever Brennan says in order to sell his product.

How delightful. An opportunity, duly grasped, to concur (almost) entirely. I do, however, still rip for specific use on pocket players during public transport journeys, etc. I also tend to burn what downloads I avail myself of to optical disc (CD-R or DVD-R) for playback in compatible disc players.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Are we in a parallel universe?

[vinteuil]

One day, I thought it time to get a life, and threw the whole lot in the bin. And I don't regret it for a minute.

I long since gave up cataloguing my discs, though I used to do so with my LP collection. I'd rather just listen to them. The same goes for ripping them to a hard disc. It all takes too much time.

I am in complete agreement with Col: Danby and Eine Alpensinfonie...

[Don Petter]

Here's another one who gave up, probably about fifteen years ago. I used a simple text file, with each record (line) having fields of fixed length for Composer, Work, Performer, etc. The total line length was restricted to eighty characters, because when I started the exercise, in the '70s, that was the width of the computer printer. I subsequently used the Foxpro database to manipulate it, but kept the restrictions for consistency and concision of output.

I had all my LPs and quite a few of my CDs in the catalogue when I gave up, mainly because the 'to enter' pile was beating me. The listing, which I estimate has some 22000 entries, is still useful. Here is a sample (The intervening lines of dots do not exist in the original. I have had to insert them to force the spacing because this forum editor seems to collapse multiple spaces to a single space.):

ADAMS T..........VOLUNTARY 4 OR..BF.......PHILLIPS.....GAMCD 522.......COLL @..1
ADLER............QUARTET 4.......1963.....PRO ARTE.....LLST..7203..............1
AGUADO...........RONDO G.........2/3......BREAM........RD....86206.....COLL @..1
AITKEN...........PARTITA V.......1968.....DAVIDOVICI...NW....334-2.....PIST @..1
ALABIEV..........QUINTET W................ZVEROV/L/S/K UACL..10018.....RIMS....1
ALAIN............LITANIES OR..............GIL..........CZS7..67291 2...COLL @..2

The entries are by work, which is the only real way to do it (but means that recital discs are a chore to enter). This solves the 'finding' problem, which others have mentioned. In the above example, I can see that the CD with the Aitkin Partita is on the shelf under 'Pist'. Almost certainly Piston, but sufficient to locate it anyway. The method depends on deciding for any one CD which is the key work. You might decide a Mozart symphony beats a Beethoven concerto, so it goes under Mozart, or Beethoven is alphabetically before Mozart, so use the former. It really doesn't matter, the system always works, even if you are inconsistent.

Issues with a number of short works can always be filed under Collections (see Aguado, above) which are shelved at the end, after the main alphabetical composer shelving. These are kept to a minimum, as the physical search for them is a bit of a free for all. Within a composer section, the items are shelved based on the old Gramophone sequence (Orchestral, Chamber, Instrumental, Choral, Vocal, Opera).

The '@' sign indicates a CD. 12" LPs have nothing in that field, as that was the standard when I started. Other symbols used were:

* for 10" LP
+ for boxed set
% for cassette tape

Thus the symbol, or lack of it, will always indicate which storage shelves to visit. (Boxed LP sets were at the end, after unboxed LPs.)

The final figure indicates the number of records or CDs in a set.

With Foxpro it was also easy to generate a 'shelf listing' which exactly mirrored the the physical items and where they should be on the shelf, at least within the composer sequence. The order within any composer could not be defined, as the genre (orchestral, chamber) was not catalogued.

Before anyone asks, yes, there was a periodic upheaval movement needed along the shelves to accomodate new items. Another reason that the whole system is now defunct.

[MrGongGong]

I use a the well established "tottering piles" system
occasionally I might separate out bought CDs from ones that I have made (usually with minimal labelling) as part of a piece of work research
but the joy of discovering things I had forgotten is often much more enjoyable than being able to instantly find a specific recording.
In our house CDs are kept in a few different places so that ones that we might sit and listen to or play "socially" are in the front room in a reasonably organised manner, with all the rest of my stuff in the "tottering pile" system in the loft that I use as a workroom. I do burn things to MP3 sometimes though I have a portable player that will play uncompressed so tend to burn .wav or .aiff files. Though when I use archives and libraries in my work I want them to be rigorously organised !!

I found this comment extraordinary

"The problem is not so bad when its JSB and his contemporaries, because at least you've a reasonable chance of finding what you want if you home in on JSB etc, but you can really be up a gumtree if its a 'Debut recital by Fiddly Bits, our astounding new virtuoso violinist' and their first disc is a selection of short pieces from several centuries with no rationale other than Fiddly Diddly can play them. The only answer I can find is to avoid such discs,"

So from this , I gather that you mean that you wont buy a CD of some music that you would like to listen to if it doesn't fit into your cataloguing system ?

some find joy in organising their music collections , sometimes much more than actually listening to the music that they are collecting (shades of Nigel Tuffnel's guitars ?)

[umslopogaas]

No, Mr Gongong, that's not so, I guess I'm not making myself clear. I have lots of recital discs and would certainly not refuse to buy anything because it would be difficult to catalogue (its an LP collection, not CDs, but the same principles apply to both). And since I seem to be characterised as someone who is more interested in catalogues than music, let me emphatically deny it: I am not in the least interested in catalogues, I just happen, over several decades, to have developed one, because I find it useful. I spend most evenings listening to my collection and a few minutes a week on the catalogue. However, the question we were asked was, what system do you use? I use Excel, because its easy, flexible and free. It does however give a problem with mixed recital discs. My solution, other than avoiding such discs, which is not satisfactory, I agree, is to catalogue either rigorously by the first item, or by the composer who has the most items. In either case it is a deficiency of the system that the other items will not be on the catalogue unless you go to the trouble to enter them all separately (I could, but I cant be bothered). Therefore every disc is catalogued, but there are a lot of compositions in my collection which are not on the catalogue and which I will have completely forgotten I own, or, worse, I know I do own but cant find. Never mind, its the joy of re-discovery, sooner or later they'll turn up.