Sorting your collection, long and fraught with opinionation.

[Poisoned Youth]

Shuffle play may be the best music-related innovation of all time.

So there.

Agreed. There is simply no reason to put down one listening mode vs. another. I mean, how snooty.


I have been and always will be an avid "album listener", but once I ripped my collection and had the opportunity to shuffle play, it was a revelation of immense proportions.

I now pretty much do my album listening in my bedroom at home and my shuffle play in the car, at work, on a plane, etc.

[Poisoned Youth]

Get Hard.

Um...

I can see the start of a new thread... "ViagraProg".

[Gruno]

Agreed. There is simply no reason to put down one listening mode vs. another. I mean, how snooty.


I have been and always will be an avid "album listener", but once I ripped my collection and had the opportunity to shuffle play, it was a revelation of immense proportions.

Pretty straight forward!

I am not into shuffle-mode. I rather make playlists for most of my listening needs. For the "get off my lawn" people who insist on listening to complete albums, it's easy to make a playlist with complete albums on them, back-to-back. So, you can load the albums you want to listen to on one playlist for that particular day and have that convenience. Then again, there will be some type of complaint that will need to be lodged because that's how it goes.

[roylayer]

I am a database guy, and If I had to do it again , I would simply store the CD's at random, adding new disks at the end of the physical pile, assigning an incremented number, and use an excel spreadsheet to keep things organized. Since I actually access the CD's so seldomly, that would probably be the most efficient way. With a spreadsheet, you can sort by anything, - Artist, Musicians, date of release, subject, Genre, Label, Indie releases... and never have to move a single disk. Even a list of all time favorites for future situations where I choose to participate in some of the lengthy lists of bands, artists.. whatever here on PE. All I would have to do is pull up the spreadsheet and cut and paste, perhaps do some research and perhaps add a tab occasionally. All the time never actually touching or disturbing my beloved CD's and remaining cassettes and Vinyl as well.

Genius! That is very similar to what I did. (I used a database instead of a spreadsheet.) When one has thousands of CDs, it becomes more difficult to keep the collection order. I left free space on each shelf, but what happens if you need to insert a CD into a row that is out of free space? Not fun! Also, after adopting the "random" method, I could find any CD in a very short period of time.

Sadly, I have returned to the Alphabetized approach since I got married. My wife was not overly enthusiastic about the Random method.

[Facelift]

Shuffle mode is the tool of the devil. It turns serious music listening into lazy passive consumption of interchangeable music-units.

For shame. Turn in your Prog Badge now.

Frankly, shuffle mode is something that, perhaps, can only be truly appreciated by the most sophisticated and perceptive music listeners. Cross-genre, cross-era juxtaposition can offer a perspective on the music that simply isn't possible otherwise, and I would submit that one can't truly appreciate it without a high degree of familiarity with a broad range of music and artists.

Granted, it can also bring some perspective on what should be the next items to put up on Ebay.

[Trane]

Frankly, shuffle mode is something that, perhaps, can only be truly appreciated by the most sophisticated and perceptive music listeners. Cross-genre, cross-era juxtaposition can offer a perspective on the music that simply isn't possible otherwise, and I would submit that one can't truly appreciate it without a high degree of familiarity with a broad range of music and artists.

Granted, it can also bring some perspective on what should be the next items to put up on Ebay.

TBH, I learned doing that quite a while ago (without shuffle play, if I may), and if I don't apply it systematically, it's precisely because I don't want to get rid of my Retro-prog bands from the 90's & 00's.

[Sunlight Caller]

I can't imagine playing Lark's Tongue while cutting the lawn....

I can't imagine what your lawn would look like if you did.

I should have taken note... I was listening to Absent Lovers while attacking some deadwood with a hedge-trimmer yesterday... Predictably the music went silent and I realised in my aggressive enthusiasm I had gone through the headphone cord too... Bloody expensive Bose one at that... Damn those Crims and their gardening-unfriendly sounds!

[Orcopian]

My main location is the upstairs man cave (previously a small bathroom) with several IKEA billy bookcases with the CD storage inserts that they no longer sell. I've got one bookcase full of the artists with large catalogues (Zappa, Genesis, Yes, Led zep KC, Hawkwind, Bevis Frond, P Tree, T Dream, Camel, Floyd etc..) then another 2 cases for prog (with large sections for 80's bands like IQ/Pallas) where the individual catalogues are smaller or even singular. The only location focused grouping is the scandinavian section. There are also smaller sections for 80's indie/pop, metal, 70's pop/rock, folk and a jazz/fusion section with all the ECM releases together. There isn't much order to this and I really need some time to get the sections in alphabetical order.

There is space on top of the cases for a dozen or so of those white IKEA cardboard CD boxes where I store artists with reasonably large catalogues (1 or 2 a box) mainly classic rock e.g. Rainbow/purple/AC/DC/ Roxy music etc.. I find its easier to group these together and free up space for new CD's. I'm running out of room so some of these boxes are now in a wardrobe.

There are a few 100 CD's in the attic which are mostly stuff from the 90's that I don't really value, but every so often I have a root around and pull something good out listen a listen like Semisonic or julian Cope.

Lastly I have a small cupboard in the Kitchen Diner where new stuff is stored whilst its ripped and so its handy to look at the booklets etc..I do most of my listening / ripping at the dining room table with everything ripped to lossless on a NAS, and listening on a macbook with an audio quest DAC and Grado phones. That is the most practical option for me. I have a sonos speaker I can use as well.

Before I was married I had less CD's but they were all in my living room, I'm probably not the only person that has happened to.

To be honest once they are ripped they could all go up the attic but I like having them available to gaze at in a rather sad way.

[rcarlberg]

Before I was married I had less CD's but they were all in my living room, I'm probably not the only person that has happened to.

To be honest once they are ripped they could all go up the attic but I like having them available to gaze at in a rather sad way.

Yeah, it's the same with old girlfriends.

[Jerjo]

Once, back when I was a cubicle slave at a legal publishing company, I wasn't paying attention while working. I finished the John Coltrane album and the media player jumped down to the next artist under J. Judas Priest. Talk about an aural whiplash. Needless to say I kept it playing.

[rcarlberg]

You could organize by color?IMG_0213.jpg