# How many albums do you own?



## Open Lane

i mostly collect cds. I own over 2500 discs of albums on cd, over 2800 if you include downloads.

I have about 400 discs that are classical music. The rest are mostly rock, instrumental rock, jazz/fusio (the most) and metal (the second most).


Anyone else here collect? What do your numbers look like?


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## Bulldog

I have about 10,000 classical cd's - none in any other category. Have not bought a cd in the past two or three years - addiction under control.


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## Merl

If we're discussing CDs then around 3000 but thats probably a tiny percentage of the music i have. I used to have around the same number of vinyl too but ive sold all that off apart from around 400 albums. However, since the start of the century ive been been collecting music digitally and dont have a clue how much is on my hard drive but theres absolutely tons. It's a 2TB HD and it's close to full (90% of the files are lossless).


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## Art Rock

About 10000 classical, about 5000 pop/rock, and probably another 1000 assorted other genres.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Around 1000 CDs collected over a period of about 25 years, 99% of which are classical. I listen to non-classical almost exclusively on Spotify now.


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## Open Lane

Everyone's collections sound pretty cool. I thought my 2500 was lwrge. 10,000 is absolutely massive.


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## JAS

Bulldog said:


> I have about 10,000 classical cd's - none in any other category. Have not bought a cd in the past two or three years - addiction under control.


Nothing but admiration from this quarter.


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## DarkAngel

Bulldog said:


> I have about 10,000 classical cd's - none in any other category. Have not bought a cd in the past two or three years - addiction under control.


I am with you BD, huge 10K+ CD collection about 50/50 classical/rock, almost no purchases last three years with Tidal, Amazon HD, Pristine XR streaming, the actual physical storage of so many CDs becomes a big issue, I have 6 of these racks 1500 Cds each plus a few smaller units.......


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## elgar's ghost

Low estimate - approx. 2500 classical CDs and about the same non-classical. My purchasing has reduced to a dribble and is mostly of the gap-filler variety. Storage issues - I've got 'em, at least until I can convert one of my tall inbuilt cupboards which is currently full of clutter. I even gave over threequarters of my bedroom chest of draws to store operas and box sets.


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## Barbebleu

DarkAngel said:


> I am with you BD, huge 10K+ CD collection about 50/50 classical/rock, almost no purchases last three years with Tidal, Amazon HD, Pristine XR streaming, the actual physical storage of so many CDs becomes a big issue, I have 6 of these racks 1500 Cds each plus a few smaller units.......


And hopefully a well-reinforced floor :lol:


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## Barbebleu

Too many. I worked out recently that if I listened to music for two hours a day every day then I will hear all of my present collection at least once in my lifetime - provided I live till I’m 114. . Of course by then I’ll have accumulated about three times the amount of music I have at the moment if I keep collecting at my present rate. I suspect my wife may have something to say about that.


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## Ras

Bulldog said:


> I have about 10,000 classical cd's - none in any other category. Have not bought a cd in the past two or three years - addiction under control.


The best method to quit an addiction is to take all the drugs you can get your hands on - when it's all gone you're clean!


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## flamencosketches

DarkAngel said:


> I am with you BD, huge 10K+ CD collection about 50/50 classical/rock, almost no purchases last three years with Tidal, Amazon HD, Pristine XR streaming, the actual physical storage of so many CDs becomes a big issue, I have 6 of these racks 1500 Cds each plus a few smaller units.......


Looks beautiful. What are all those EMIs on the top? They look so uniform. Is that a collection of a single composer or artist? Looks like you have tons of opera, all those thick boxes.

I just started collecting last year and I probably have about 800 CDs. Way too many... It freaks me out when I do the math and think about how much I've spent on them. When I'm buying one or two CDs for 5 bucks a piece it never seems so bad, until I realize I'm buying like 10 discs a week.  I want to slow my roll, but there's still so much music I want.


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## Itullian

flamencosketches said:


> Looks beautiful. What are all those EMIs on the top? They look so uniform. Is that a collection of a single composer or artist? Looks like you have tons of opera, all those thick boxes.
> 
> I just started collecting last year and I probably have about 800 CDs. Way too many... It freaks me out when I do the math and think about how much I've spent on them. When I'm buying one or two CDs for 5 bucks a piece it never seems so bad, until I realize I'm buying like 10 discs a week.  I want to slow my roll, but there's still so much music I want.


I think they are Callas operas on EMI


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## Barbebleu

Further to my last post I still occasionally buy cds but only if I can’t get a digital download. Storage is a problem and hard drives take up considerably less space. All my cds are digitised but I would never get rid of them. Of course the big download fear I have is crashing hard drives so I have back-ups. And back-ups of the back-ups!!


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## DarkAngel

flamencosketches said:


> Looks beautiful. What are all those EMIs on the top? They look so uniform. Is that a collection of a single composer or artist? Looks like you have tons of opera, all those thick boxes.
> 
> I just started collecting last year and I probably have about 800 CDs. Way too many... It freaks me out when I do the math and think about how much I've spent on them. When I'm buying one or two CDs for 5 bucks a piece it never seems so bad, until I realize I'm buying like 10 discs a week.  I want to slow my roll, but there's still so much music I want.





Itullian said:


> I think they are Callas operas on EMI


The sharp eyed Itullian is correct, long ago before I had a complete Callas CD boxset I was buying each opera individually with slip cover and booklet....


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## flamencosketches

Ah, I see. I just started getting into Callas. A Callas CD just showed up on my doorstep, Verdi Arias Vol.1 (I haven't started collecting the complete operas as I'm not much of an Italian opera guy—at least not yet; Callas may be the one to convert me). You're clearly a committed fan, and rightly so. She definitely had a hell of a voice!


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## jegreenwood

Barbebleu said:


> Further to my last post I still occasionally buy cds but only if I can't get a digital download. Storage is a problem and hard drives take up considerably less space. All my cds are digitised but I would never get rid of them. Of course the big download fear I have is crashing hard drives so I have back-ups. And back-ups of the back-ups!!


That's pretty much what I've done. I have about 4000 "albums" (including discs and downloads - mostly discs). The discs are in binders, the booklets on a shelf more or less in alphabetical order by music type. Maybe 60% classical. Pop/rock and jazz make up the majority of the rest. I grew up in a home that worshipped Broadway and the American songbook, so I have a decent size collection of those.


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## Kiki

I have been collecting since the early 80s. Up to around 10 years ago, I didn't have too many albums, probably around 1000 CDs, LPs and a few LDs combined. Lost (thrown away) all my cassettes and VHS tapes many years ago. That was sad.

Since around 10 years ago, I have digitised all my CDs/BDs/SACDs and started buying downloads. Only very occasionally I would buy a CD when a download is not available, or when a CD is cheaper than a download. That was a turning point in terms of the size of my collection. My classical collection has now grown to around 2500 albums (an "album" may be a single CD or a box set containing many CDs).

The space occupied by physical media is no longer a growing problem; and they have formed a very nice looking backdrop in my listening room. One day these discs and booklets will have deteriorated so much that they will become unplayable/unreadable (a few already have), then they would become a different problem of keeping something "useless", but I'm not worrying about that right now; and then I would still have my digital collection so I'm not worrying about the music either.

Having said that, although harddisks are cheap and don't occupy a lot of space, I had to move my collection to larger harddisks a few times already during the past 10 years. That's effort. It's different kind of problem from that of physical media.

Also all harddisks have a limited life-scan. Starting out with an ultra large (and expensive) harddisk would be a waste of money. It would go banana fruitcake before you could fill it up. And therefore - Backups are important. Backups are important. Backups are important. it is very important so I said it three times.


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## Simplicissimus

I have about 1000 classical CDs that I’ve collected over the past 30 years. I catalogue them in an Excel spreadsheet by composition, not disc, and store them in a couple of large cabinets, mostly organized alphabetically but with some special collections separate, like early music and a few box sets. Besides classical, I have a couple dozen American Song Book and jazz CDs, ~50 CDs of Mongolian folk and popular music, and 20 CDs of deutsche Hörspiele. I don’t have any music on hard drives and don’t plan to. My listening is about 50% CD, 25% Amazon HD, and 25% classical music radio (WFMT-Chicago, live-streamed).


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## Merl

Kiki said:


> Having said that, although harddisks are cheap and don't occupy a lot of space, I had to move my collection to larger harddisks a few times already during the past 10 years. That's effort. It's different kind of problem from that of physical media.
> 
> Also all harddisks have a limited life-scan. Starting out with an ultra large (and expensive) harddisk would be a waste of money. It would go banana fruitcake before you could fill it up. And therefore - Backups are important. Backups are important. Backups are important. it is very important so I said it three times.


I need to get two new HDs this year. Then I have the enormous job of moving over all those files (last time it took about 3 days of swapping files and I lost a few things due to file errors)
I keep my rock and classical music on different HDs as I have a lot less rock these days than classical. I'm hoping to do this in the next half-term holidays. I need to buy a pair of new 4TB HDs first.


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## jegreenwood

Kiki said:


> I have been collecting since the early 80s. Up to around 10 years ago, I didn't have too many albums, probably around 1000 CDs, LPs and a few LDs combined. Lost (thrown away) all my cassettes and VHS tapes many years ago. That was sad.
> 
> Since around 10 years ago, I have digitised all my CDs/BDs/SACDs and started buying downloads. Only very occasionally I would buy a CD when a download is not available, or when a CD is cheaper than a download. That was a turning point in terms of the size of my collection. My classical collection has now grown to around 2500 albums (an "album" may be a single CD or a box set containing many CDs).
> 
> The space occupied by physical media is no longer a growing problem; and they have formed a very nice looking backdrop in my listening room. One day these discs and booklets will have deteriorated so much that they will become unplayable/unreadable (a few already have), then they would become a different problem of keeping something "useless", but I'm not worrying about that right now; and then I would still have my digital collection so I'm not worrying about the music either.
> 
> Having said that, although harddisks are cheap and don't occupy a lot of space, I had to move my collection to larger harddisks a few times already during the past 10 years. That's effort. It's different kind of problem from that of physical media.
> 
> Also all harddisks have a limited life-scan. Starting out with an ultra large (and expensive) harddisk would be a waste of money. It would go banana fruitcake before you could fill it up. And therefore - Backups are important. Backups are important. Backups are important. it is very important so I said it three times.


One thing that takes up a lot of my hard drive space - SACDs. For each of my 450 discs, I have two copies of the ISOs, DSD files and a 88/24 pcm conversion files (as some of my players cannot handle DSD). For dual layer discs, I also have two copies of the redbook rip. And of course the original discs.


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## starthrower

My collection is nowhere near as neat and tidy as Dark Angel's. If I had started out buying a few large racks like that I'd be in better shape. Honesty, I have no idea how many CDs or albums I have. I've never counted but I'm guessing around 5000 or so. Mostly jazz and classical although I have hundreds of rock CDs that don't get played much anymore.


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## eljr

Bulldog said:


> addiction under control.


serious question... how hard is it?

Still have craving for physical media?


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## starthrower

Addiction or preference? If one is still spending loads of money on downloads the addiction has still got hold. I refuse to spend money on an electronic signal. I'll just buy a CD.


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## Bulldog

eljr said:


> serious question... how hard is it?
> 
> Still have craving for physical media?


Getting over the addiction was much easier than I thought it would be. Somehow, I trained my brain to focus on the composers and compositions while not keying on recordings. I think that creating and running TC games helped a lot.


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## Bulldog

starthrower said:


> Addiction or preference? If one is still spending loads of money on downloads the addiction has still got hold.


In addition to not buying cds anymore, I've never downloaded any music in my life. I am 100% free of addiction.


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## starthrower

Bulldog said:


> In addition to not buying cds anymore, I've never downloaded any music in my life. I am 100% free of addiction.


With 10,000 classical albums what else is there to buy?


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## Bulldog

starthrower said:


> With 10,000 classical albums what else is there to buy?


Are you serious? The fact is that there are many thousands of cd's I'd like to have. The field seems to be endless.


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## starthrower

Bulldog said:


> Are you serious? The fact is that there are many thousands of cd's I'd like to have. The field seems to be endless.


Everything is endless but who's got the time? There's more to life than listening to records. Right now I'm really missing concerts and social interaction with people.


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## Bulldog

starthrower said:


> Everything is endless but who's got the time? There's more to life than listening to records. Right now I'm really missing concerts and social interaction with people.


Not me. I rarely go to concerts, and social interaction is way overrated. Actually, interaction is bad for the body.


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## CnC Bartok

I think I'm at the 7,000-8,000 mark. I still prefer physical CDs by a long chalk, but there have been more downloads in the past few months, and besides, these don't have to go into the attic when space gets tight!


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## starthrower

Bulldog said:


> Not me. I rarely go to concerts, and social interaction is way overrated. Actually, interaction is bad for the body.


Whatever? I think most people prefer a balance. And I fear that this lousy virus may do irreparable damage to humanity, society and culture. We may lose the world's great orchestras. We'll be left only with our CDs. Maybe this is fine for older folks but it's a drag for younger people and musicians.


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## Bulldog

starthrower said:


> Whatever? I think most people prefer a balance. And I fear that this lousy virus may do irreparable damage to humanity, society and culture. We may lose the world's great orchestras. We'll be left only with our CDs.


Try to be optimistic. Life is great.


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## Rmathuln

I last counted them 6 years ago, and the result was over 15,000 CDs.
Now it probably is over 25,000.

And a few hundred LPs too, maybe over 1,000.


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## DarkAngel

Rmathuln said:


> I last counted them 6 years ago, and the result was over 15,000 CDs.
> *Now it probably is over 25,000*.
> 
> And a few hundred LPs too, maybe over 1,000.


How do you store your CDs, this is a huge collection!

Are you still buying CDs today?


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## Open Lane

Rmathuln said:


> I last counted them 6 years ago, and the result was over 15,000 CDs.
> Now it probably is over 25,000.
> 
> And a few hundred LPs too, maybe over 1,000.


This sounds insane. You got any pics?. Lol. I'm running out of room for my 2550


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## realdealblues

I collect CD's. I usually get a couple new ones every day.

I haven't counted them but I would say I have at least 20,000-30,000. Probably 20,000 classical and 10,000 other Genres. I still have probably 1,000 LP's in the basement, although I finally sold off my 8 tracks a year or 2 ago. I have maybe 100 cassette tapes hanging around somewhere too.

I probably have another 10,000 albums that are digital that I do not physically own but I generally don't count them.


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## Ras

I have ca. 2000 stored in IKEA's Gnedby shelves:
I try not to buy more and just listen on Spotify. But a few CDs are still "mandatory" for me.


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## elgar's ghost

^
^

You must either be very tall or there is a set of library steps out of shot.


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## Ras

elgars ghost said:


> ^
> ^
> 
> You must either be very tall or there is a set of library steps out of shot.


I'm 188 centimeters tall, but still need the library steps, yes!


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## Itullian

A few thousand I guess.


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## Open Lane

https://rateyourmusic.com/collection/JazzGtrDude/visual/

You can see my collection in the above link. About 50%, 15% classical, maybe 35% rock/instrumental rock/metal


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## Open Lane

About 50% jazz***


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## thejewk

Including digital, CDs and vinyl, probably in the region of 2000 or so, maybe less because I downsized a little a few years back.

Not really purchased much in the past few years, but it's ramping back a little now I've started exploring classical stuff again. 

I'm trying to be fairly picky when it comes to physical though, I have health problems and spend most of my time at a desk, so digital makes a lot more sense to me now than it did in the past.


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## adriesba

If I count big boxes as one album, I have around 140-150 albums, which seems like a lot to me but is apparently quite modest compared to some others' collections here! :lol:


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## NoCoPilot

I haven't counted in a while. The short answer is "too many." This is C to Z.


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## adriesba

NoCoPilot said:


> I haven't counted in a while. The short answer is "too many." This is C to Z.
> View attachment 145622


‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎


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## Rmathuln

Open Lane said:


> I last counted them 6 years ago, and the result was over 15,000 CDs.
> Now it probably is over 25,000.
> 
> And a few hundred LPs too, maybe over 1,000.


How do you store your CDs, this is a huge collection!

Are you still buying CDs today?



Open Lane said:


> This sounds insane. You got any pics?. Lol. I'm running out of room for my 2550


Yes, I am still buying CDs today.
Just order a little over 50 from ImportCds yesterday

I counted them all yesterday and this morning.

Total right now comes to 28,493

I don't have any pix right now, but I will try to put a set together between now and the end of the year.


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## Helgi

I've been reading books on minimalism lately, and am actively trying to reduce the amount of stuff in my life, selling and giving things away — feeling relieved and energized as a result. 

And yet I still dream about a floor-to-ceiling wall-to-wall CD collection


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## CnC Bartok

NoCoPilot said:


> I haven't counted in a while. The short answer is "too many." This is C to Z.
> View attachment 145622


At first glance this looks pretty impressive, but I did notice some space is taken up by model cars, giving the mere illusion of a large collection :lol::devil:


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## JAS

I am somewhat relieved to see that there are people who are in much worse shape than I am . . . that is, with much larger collections.


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## Helgi

I'm looking forward to Rmathuln's pictures — I have no conception of what a collection of 28,493 CDs looks like.

Do you have any pictures of your collection, realdealblues?


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## NoCoPilot

CnC Bartok said:


> At first glance this looks pretty impressive, but I did notice some space is taken up by model cars, giving the mere illusion of a large collection :lol::devil:


When I INITIALLY set up this "wall o' shame" I had enough open space that I started buying cars to mark the letters of the alphabet: Corvette for 'C', Delorean for 'D', Edsel for 'E' and so forth. I never finished that plan because some letters just refused to submit.

Also, I started filling in the gaps, and before I knew it I had to retire most of the cars to my library. Nature abhors a vacuum (and isn't too fond of dust mops either).


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## CnC Bartok

The best-laid plans of mice and men.......:tiphat:


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## pianozach

Damn, people. Jeez.

I've got roughly *500 LPs* in boxes down in the garage. A shame. None of them have been played in at least 5 years.

I've got roughly *500 CDs*, some of which (maybe 50?) are tough to access, in a little shelf unit behind some junk. I'd say that I've downloaded almost all of them into my computer.

I just converted most of my *digital* collection to mp3; the tracks that were AAC were hogging up too much room on my iMac and actually slowing it down. I have roughly *50 days* worth taking up *131gb*. It would be impossible to count in terms of "albums" as I've got quite a collection of individual tracks, and there's really no accurate way to sort them to count, as each track has an album title assigned to it.


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## NoCoPilot

I've been collecting for roughly 55 years so it's been a slow process of accretion. I sold all my LPs in 2016 -- once their value came back up from zero -- and have been slowly replacing the ones I miss with CD reissues, or making my own. CDs and cassettes have that advantage over vinyl. There have been very very few albums I haven't been able to duplicate. Cleaning up LP files has become my retirement hobby.


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## Merl

Merl said:


> If we're discussing CDs then around 3000 but thats probably a tiny percentage of the music i have. I used to have around the same number of vinyl too but ive sold all that off apart from around 400 albums. However, since the start of the century ive been been collecting music digitally and dont have a clue how much is on my hard drive but theres absolutely tons. It's a 2TB HD and it's close to full (90% of the files are lossless).


After 4 weeks of hard drive cleaning I've deleted about 400gb of duplicate files, stuff I've bought on CD and even a folder full of old rock music that was on that drive (I keep my rock stuff on another external HD) so now I'm down to about 1.4TB and I have about 400GB on the laptop HD to transfer over to the external HD. I still have a lot of sorting out to do!


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## Oakey

Great to read about all these collections!


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## NoCoPilot

Many years ago a cousin of mine in Oslo sent me a news clipping about a gentleman whose LP collection had taken over his house. He had something like 40,000 of them, in every room of his small house, including the kitchen and hallways.

At some point it slips into hoarding.

If you have multiple copies of music you don't listen to, if you have no organization system, if you don't know or care what you have, I'd say you're not a collector anymore. Fortunately I don't think I'm there yet (but don't ask my wife).


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## pianozach

Merl said:


> After 4 weeks of hard drive cleaning I've deleted about 400gb of duplicate files, stuff I've bought on CD and even a folder full of old rock music that was on that drive (I keep my rock stuff on another external HD) so now I'm down to about 1.4TB and I have about 400GB on the laptop HD to transfer over to the external HD. I still have a lot of sorting out to do!
> 
> View attachment 145656


Yeah. I had to convert to mp3 to free up space.

iTunes tells me I have 17,366 individual tracks.


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## DarkAngel

DarkAngel said:


> I am with you BD, huge 10K+ CD collection about 50/50 classical/rock, almost no purchases last three years with Tidal, Amazon HD, Pristine XR streaming, the actual physical storage of so many CDs becomes a big issue, I have 6 of these racks 1500 Cds each plus a few smaller units.......


As I ran out of room and places to put CD racks I had to improvise and make "riser" shelves to stack on top of existing racks, this gave me some additional cushion for overflow CDs but thankfully now I rarely buy CDs with availability of cheap HD music streaming services


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## Oakey

Here's a picture of my CD collection. Only about 4 shelves are classical though.



I still listen to 3-4 CDs a day, no streaming for me, and what I purchase on CD is mostly classical. Pop is mostly vinyl and the occasional CD. I do clear out stuff once in a while.


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## NoCoPilot

Bottom two racks need some explanation, please.


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## pianozach

NoCoPilot said:


> Bottom two racks need some explanation, please.


I'd say that those shelves (11 & 12) are coordinated sets or series from specific distributors . . . all matchy matchy.

There's some random sets scattered elsewhere through the shelving. There's a rather large collection of something on the 3rd shelf

Shelf 13, on the very bottom, is designed a bit taller for box sets that are sometimes a bit oversized. I see "David Bowie" printed on four of the box sets. One of the sets has Bach's face on it (bottom right shelf).

The photo resolution isn't high enough to make out what's printed on almost all of the CDs, although the first box, top left, starts with a "A", so I'd say that these puppies are alphabetized somehow.

I'll bet that there are people here that can identify the record label by the design on the spine of the case.


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## Oakey

Sorry, about not explaining  Only the lower 4 are classical indeed. While the pop shelves are alphabetical (artist/group), followed by samplers and then soundtracks, the 3 lower shelves (classical) are organised by label and spine colour. A big nono I know, and I have to find another way to organise it one day. It indeed takes me effort to find something I want to listen to... it just looks nice (I don't have my books organised by colour btw).

The bottom shelf is for larger box sets (pop left, classical right), and bluray audio and stuff like that. The lower right are larger classical box sets, mostly opera. The Bach box is the Passions box set by Brilliant. The shelf one from below is all Naxos (also several from their mediocre standard reportoire years that I still have to sort out), as is the right part of the 2nd lower shelf. Thr rest on that one is all DG and thr one above is mixed (the red ones are EMI).

Some close-ups for those interested:


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## NoCoPilot

You are ALMOST normal. A true geek would have organized the DGG and Naxos by catalog number, or composer, or date of recording, or name of first chair violinist.


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## joen_cph

Oakey said:


> Sorry, about not explaining  Only the lower 4 are classical indeed. While the pop shelves are alphabetical (artist/group), followed by samplers and then soundtracks, the 3 lower shelves (classical) are organised by label and spine colour. A big nono I know, and I have to find another way to organise it one day. It indeed takes me effort to find something I want to listen to... it just looks nice (I don't have my books organised by colour btw).
> 
> The bottom shelf is for larger box sets (pop left, classical right), and bluray audio and stuff like that. The lower right are larger classical box sets, mostly opera. The Bach box is the Passions box set by Brilliant. The shelf one from below is all Naxos (also several from their mediocre standard reportoire years that I still have to sort out), as is the right part of the 2nd lower shelf. Thr rest on that one is all DG and thr one above is mixed (the red ones are EMI).
> 
> Some close-ups for those interested:


I love such photos.


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## Oakey

NoCoPilot said:


> You are ALMOST normal. A true geek would have organized the DGG and Naxos by catalog number, or composer, or date of recording, or name of first chair violinist.


Thanks  Naxos by catalogue number sounds tempting though...


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## joen_cph

Interesting that among symphonists, you have the eccentric Langgaard, and also chose the more classicist, but not very well-known Hamerik. How come that you got Hamerik?


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## Oakey

I discovered Hamerik on my search for Scandinavian/Nordic symphonies which turned out I like very much. And I like classical SACD for the surround sound very much (listening to Tyberg’s Masses on Pentatone’s surround SACD now, so beautiful). Think the Hamerik box was on sale, probably got it together with the Langgaard box.

JPC.de was my dealer for most of these.

I also like Requiems a lot, so when I come across one (composition, not performance) that I do not know, I often buy it.


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## NoCoPilot

Oops"...........


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## NoCoPilot

Oakey said:


> the 3 lower shelves (classical) are organised by label and spine colour. A big nono I know, and I have to find another way to organise it one day. It indeed takes me effort to find something I want to listen to...


Organizing your collection is a very _personal_, very _individual_ task. Everybody will do it differently.

Archie Patterson used to file his by how many albums a band had released: all bands who had released four albums were together, followed by bands who had five albums.

For myself, almost everything is by artist last name. Exceptions are where I won't remember the artist, and purchased the disc for some other identifying feature. For instance, all my glass harmonica recordings are under 'G,' all my pipe organ recordings under 'O' (could just as easily have been 'P,' but there ARE some reed organs in there). I have a collection of percussion ensemble recordings, all filed under 'Per' but alphabetical within that grouping. Segovia has his own section, but some lesser-knowns are filed together under 'G'. It makes sense to me (mostly).

Rarely do I collect labels, but the entire set of ten Obscure Records releases is filed together, as are samplers for Recommended Records, Louisville Records and Phase 4 Stereo.

There are language anomalies. The Beatles and The Animals are not under 'T,' but El Chicano is under 'E,' La Düsseldorf is under 'L' and Il Baricentro is under 'I.'

Sometimes I lose stuff. Sometimes I misfile. Sometimes I change my mind and forget where my new organization put it. When Alzheimer's kicks in it'll all go to the dump anyway.


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## joen_cph

Haven't counted for quite a few years, culled and bought a lot, but I'd guess around 8000 - 8500 albums, shared between CDs and LPs, with around 96% of them being classical, and the rest some rock/alternative/jazz/folk.

Also some downloads, not included, and rarely heard.


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## elgar's ghost

In my collection everything has to be alphabetical by composer, followed by a genre hierarchy within a particular composer's output. If there is more than one composer on a disc then the one with the most running time takes preference. Box sets and opera are stored elsewhere, mainly due to space issues. With a large collection I couldn't imagine a better method of allowing me to know where a particular something is.


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## Oakey

Of course alphabetizing by composer would be best, like I do with artist for pop. The complexity is that many classical CD's have pieces of more than one composer, but do not qualify as 'sampler' IMO (cf the various artists compilations in pop). So what to do with them? Alphabetize on the composer with the most music on it makes most sense I guess. However, in that case, retrieving the other pieces becomes an impossible mission too. The struggles, the struggles...


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## elgar's ghost

Oakey said:


> Of course alphabetizing by composer would be best, like I do with artist for pop. _The complexity is that many classical CD's have pieces of more than one composer, but do not qualify as 'sampler' IMO (cf the various artists compilations in pop). So what to do with them? Alphabetize on the composer with the most music on it makes most sense I guess. However, in that case, retrieving the other pieces becomes an impossible mission too. The struggles, the struggles..._


I take your point there - luckily I don't have many so I can normally remember what else is on them.


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## jegreenwood

Oakey said:


> Of course alphabetizing by composer would be best, like I do with artist for pop. The complexity is that many classical CD's have pieces of more than one composer, but do not qualify as 'sampler' IMO (cf the various artists compilations in pop). So what to do with them? Alphabetize on the composer with the most music on it makes most sense I guess. However, in that case, retrieving the other pieces becomes an impossible mission too. The struggles, the struggles...


Here's where ripping has an advantage. I can sort by genre (most common for me), album (not very useful for classical) or composer. By the way, I leave the composer field empty for all of my music other than classical, so for instance, Bob Dylan never shows up as a composer. There are other ways I can sort (by conductor or orchestra for instance), but they don't reflect the way I choose the music I want to listen to.


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## pianozach

You can also create a catalog of your CD collection, but that is a long and involved process.

It does, however, allow you to locate orphan pieces, as long as your physical sorting allows you to locate a CD, which would likely not be a problem.

The more columns of information the better. Your columns will include, CD title, individual works, Op. #s, Composer, Conductor, soloist(s), orchestra, year of composition, year of recording, and each damned track with columns for alternate names i suppose.

I rarely pop CDs in anymore, except in my car, so I find that the *iTunes* filter feature to be quite useful in locating pieces or composers. But it also allows displays of a couple dozens columns, including track #, year, composer, genre . . . .


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## elgar's ghost

^
^

I once tried to compile a spreadsheet catalogue but abandoned it after the first couple of hundred or so albums - at the time my job included a lot of time-consuming data entry so I was probably demotivated before I even started.


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## joen_cph

pianozach said:


> You can also create a catalog of your CD collection, but that is a long and involved process.
> 
> It does, however, allow you to locate orphan pieces, as long as your physical sorting allows you to locate a CD, which would likely not be a problem.
> 
> The more columns of information the better. Your columns will include, CD title, individual works, Op. #s, Composer, Conductor, soloist(s), orchestra, year of composition, year of recording, and each damned track with columns for alternate names i suppose.
> 
> I rarely pop CDs in anymore, except in my car, so I find that the *iTunes* filter feature to be quite useful in locating pieces or composers. But it also allows displays of a couple dozens columns, including track #, year, composer, genre . . . .


I just do a Word file.

Example:
_____________________________________________________________________

FRICKER, Peter Racine (5/9 1920 London - 1/2 1990 Santa Barbara):
_
GAMMEL SAMLING:_ (=collection in the old media; I've since given up downloading any further)

_CD Fricker:"1.Symfoni" op.9 (1949)/Thomson,BBCNorthSO/lyrita 2cd 17 ream 2136
LP Fricker:"1.Symfoni" op.9 (1949)/Whitney,LouisvilleO/rca 77 gl 25057
CD Fricker:"2.Symfoni" op.14 (1951)/Rosen,BBCNorthSO/lyrita 2cd 17 ream 2136
cd Fricker:"2.Symfoni" op.14 (1951)/Pritchard,LivPO/emi mono 02 7243 575789-2
CD Fricker:"3.Symfoni" op.36 (1958)/Downes,BBCNorthSO/lyrita 2cd 17 ream 2136
CD Fricker:"4.Symfoni" op.43 (1966;79)/Handford,BBCNorthSO/lyrita 2cd 17 ream 2136

cd Fricker:"1.Violinkoncert" op.11 (1950)/Neaman,Mar,RPO/lyrita 4cd srcd 2346

CD Fricker."Rondo Scherzoso" f.Ork. (1948)/Thomson,BBCNorthSO/lyrita 2cd 17 ream 2136
CD Fricker:"Comedy Ouverture" f.Ork. op.32 (1958)/Rosen,BBCNorthSO/lyrita 2cd 17 ream 2136

CQ Fricker:"Cellosonate" ()/Solister/dwl_

_____________________________________________________________________

Composers listed alphabetically, works and the owned recordings then listed according to genre, typically chronologically or by opus numbers. But it's difficult to search besides composers oeuvres.

CD = cd placed under this composer.
cd = cd placed under another composer or in compilations.

Many years ago I did a list according to individual label releases too, but it took too much time to do that, and with all the varying re-releases, it has become of even less importance as well.


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## NoCoPilot

Back in the early computer days -- mid 1980s -- I had my collection fully databased, using Peter Norton's Pro-File relational database. You could customize it up the gump stump and search on any parameter. I had not only the composer and title but the label and catalog number, musicians who appeared on the recordings, song titles & lengths, recording date and release date, and a wildcard field that was used for anything unusual about the recording that I might search on. I could pull up all the albums that Pete Banks played on, I could pull up everything recorded in September 1979, I could see which catalog items I was missing in a label, I could see all my albums that featured a didgeridoo.

It was slick. Unfortunately it was a lot of work, and when CDs came out I couldn't keep up. Then Norton sold Pro-File and the product was quietly buried and I've never found another RDB that could do the same things.

Now it's up to memory, and I lose things.


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## NoCoPilot

Oakey said:


> The complexity is that many classical CDs have pieces of more than one composer, but do not qualify as 'sampler' IMO (cf the various artists compilations in pop). So what to do with them? Alphabetize on the composer with the most music on it makes most sense I guess.


In my case I file these under the composer & piece I bought the CD for. There's usually one that caused me to buy the album... unless, say, it's an album of pieces played by a particular guitarist and then I file it under the guitarist.


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