# Cataloging your CD Collection?



## Roger

Hi, my first post here  

I'm looking for a computer program that would allow me to catalog all of my CDs. I know of MUSIC COLLECTOR, but that doesn't work for me, so I was hoping for something similar. 

Could some kind soul let me know what program they use for this? I know there are plenty of options, but I'm not sure where to start. 

Thanks for any help!


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## Kuhlau

Hi Roger. 

Can't help you find a program as I don't use one. But you might find one mentioned in this thread on organising one's CD collection over at Amazon. Not saying you will, but there's always a chance. 

How do you organise your library of music?

Best of luck. And do please let us know if you hit on something useful.

FK


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## Krummhorn

Hi Roger ... Welcome to Talk Classical 

I use FileMaker Pro 7. Although their current product is Pro 9, there is nothing wrong with using an older application, and it's heck of a lot cheaper, too. Within FileMaker, you can design your own forms and enter information via a GUI instead of having to enter info into cells. 

You can also use Excel - this comes as a bundle with most PC's sold. Within that you can create colums and rows with titled data. You can even sort after data has been entered.


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## jhar26

Rate Your Music is an excellent site to catalog your music....You can also rate your cd's (from 0,5 to 5 stars) and even write reviews for other members to read.

http://rateyourmusic.com/


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## BuddhaBandit

I use Bento, a database application from the FileMaker company. It's far cheaper than the full version of FileMaker, and has cool graphics.


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## Weston

I've tried databases and also Excel. Excel works great, but I had to stop and wonder why I was cataloging stuff to begin with. I realized it was so I would remember what I already have when I go shopping. So what really works best for me is just a word processor (Word in this case) in which I list everything by composer, then piece title, artist, etc.:

*Howells, Herbert* 
Penguinski (1933) - Richard Hickox / BBC Symphony Orchestra (2000), 
Chandos CHAN 9874 [CD] premier recording
Piano Concerto No. 1 in Cm, Op. 4 (1914) - Richard Hickox / BBC Symphony Orchestra; 
Howard Shelly, piano (2000), Chandos CHAN 9874 [CD] premier recording
Piano Concerto No. 2 in Cm, Op. 39 (1925) - Richard Hickox / BBC Symphony Orchestra; 
Howard Shelly, piano (2000), Chandos CHAN 9874 [CD]

That's really one CD. If they are mp3's I show what disc # it's on, etc. I add to it whenever I acquire a new piece. This list which is up to about 80 pages now can be printed out and taken with me shopping. The other programs could never format things conveniently for printing as far as I could tell.


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## marinermark

Quite a coincidence. My first post also. I was about to post a similar request when I saw Roger's. Taking off from 'Music Collector' my MSN search for 'CD catalog software' turned up a number of choices. All are far more comprehensive than the 'Schwann Catalog' format I had in mind. Fortunately most have free trial versions, so I'll select one and see how it works. I'll keep you advised.


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## SPR

*iTunes.*

OK. Dont laugh. I'm being serious here.

Through inertia, I have wound up using iTunes, and it has worked out better than expected.. for a few reasons.

The first reason is that I carry around a 160 GB ipod. It is large enough to hold more than 1,500 CDs, digitized into high quality MP3's (256kbps or higher, VBR). This is important because I spend a fair amount of time in the car commuting, and this is where I listen to the bulk of my music, and I do not have to fumble around wilth piles of CD's every day. My car audio is very nice, with direct ipod hardwired connection - which is critical.

Secondly, itunes, and the related CDDB database lookups, do a 'reasonable' job or getting tracknames etc. I have found that classical music MP3 tags in particular are frequently *horribly* done... or rather, do not work for me. But.. if you spend a little time carefully (and consistently) tagging music as you get it - it pays off bigtime.

Generally, the regular navigation on ipod/itunes lets you find music very quickly by composer, artist, genre etc. It also lets you rate music as you play it.

Together, proper tagging and ratings lead you to smart playlists. For example, select all music containing 'piano' and 'concerto', and Voila... you have a playlist with 500 piano concertos across all composers. Its very nice.

I also for another example, have a playlist that has a *complete* chronology of mozart work from KV1 through KV622.

...another playlist containing chamber music, another containing just string quartets etc etc. You can get carried away, I have a couple hundred playlists.

The nice part is, if you do it right... as you add music, it is largely automatically picked up by a good many of these playlists. Again, the trick is keeping up with the tagging and categorizing as you get new music.

one by-product of this... is that I generally 'rip' music and then it goes onto the shelf. Most CD's that I have purchased in the last 5 years are virtually untouched and in pristine condition. Of course my home system is nice and I sometimes play CD's directly - but the differenfces are minor and I frequently use my iPod even at home since it is so convenient.

Anyway.. sorry for babling. If anyone wants to discuss MP3 Tagging and itunes etc, let me know.

CDs, I believe... will go the way of the Dodo sooner than I would like, but that is another topic. I think I will start a thread on that....


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## cougarbluehen

*Surprised by iTunes too*

Like SPR, I too have been surprised at how well iTunes catalogs my music. This of course requires a bit of work to rip all your music to mp3 format and then tag it accordingly, but I do almost all my listening via mp3 now, so it's no problem for me.

iTunes doesn't offer too many stats, though, so I've been dabbling around with writing my own executable program to catalog my music for me. The program takes its data from the iTunes library file and then opens up a window that displays all the desired information and stats that I want. It sorts much better than Excel, too. I'd be happy to share it, provided it's ever completed. If others were interested in it I'd probably make more time for it.
It's not hard to do, but it does require time. Also, I'm most familiar with Visual Basic, so that's the language it's in, which, unfortunately, means it only runs on Windows.

As a bit of an aside, two aspects of iTunes make it particularly useful for classical music:

1) the ability to specify track numbers
2) the ability to shuffle by 'group'

The first means I can rearrange the tracks from an album into whatever order I prefer, rather than the order the manufacturer decided on. This is most helpful for large albums, such as, say, a complete set of Brahms' chamber music, where I would prefer to have all the string quartets, quintets and sextets grouped together.

The second means I can shuffle a list of pieces without separating the movements from a single work. It's a brilliant idea that was clearly designed with classical music listeners in mind.


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## SPR

cougarbluehen - clearly - We need to talk. I did programming for about 20 years, and know itunes inside & out.

'shuffle by group'. Did I miss something?

I think that only works within itunes itself (not on the ipod)... and also still randomizes songs within the same group correct? I dont think it can play songs of the same group 'in order' and then randomly select the next group... can it?

....not trying to hijack this thread....


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## cougarbluehen

*iTunes--shuffly by group*

Regarding the "shuffle by group" option, iTunes does indeed shuffle complete groups, all the while maintaining the order of the tracks within each group.

My best description of it is as follows. Suppose I have a custom playlist of Beethoven's late string quartets (12-16). Under the "grouping" field I tag the four movements of Quartet 12 with the same text, something like "String Quartet 12 (Beethoven)." I do the same for the seven movements (incl. Grosse Fugue) of Quartet 13, labeling them "String Quartet 13 (Beethoven)," and continue for each of the five quartets. Then, I enable "Controls-->Shuffle-->By Grouping". When I then open the playlist and put it in shuffle mode, the playback order of the quartets is randomized (e.g. 14-12-16-15-13), but the order of the movements within each quartet is properly maintained (I-II-III-IV etc.). I believe this maintaining of movement order is based on track numbers (i.e. movement I plays first b/c its track number is lowest, movement II plays second b/c its track number is next in line, etc.). If I would like the Grosse Fugue to shuffle on its own (i.e. as a separate work, not as part of Quartet 13), I simply remove the label in its "grouping" field.

As far as I know, this type of shuffling is only available in iTunes itself, not on the iPod, as you indicated. Sorry if that was unclear. I've only ever owned a "Shuffle" though, so I'm not fully sure. Most of my listening comes while I'm working at a computer during the day, so it's not a problem for me.

Hope this clarifies it. When I first read about this shuffling option in iTunes I became an instant fan. It certainly blew away what I was able to do in Windows Media Player.


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## Ciel_Rouge

As we accumulate an increasing number of records over time, we tend to experience the "I did not even know I have that" phenomenon from time to time  Furthermore, as we do not know exactly what we have, it is not as easy to plan what we are going to buy next. 

Some alternative ways have been mentioned, but I would like to reignite the thread for those of us who prefer Excel spreadsheets.

In my case: I decided to keep a list of all records while I still can (I suppose building a whole new list would be next to impossible for someone who already exceeded the four digit mark in the number of records kept). I also keep a separate list of more general names of directions and genres, like "lute song" and instruments like "zurna" which might inspire me to actually expand my horizons in new directions and find actual artists and records.

Why should we prefer Excel?

- the files can comprise the whole collection of music and even books and still remain small files that can be emailed to a friend
- we do not have to install anything - as metnioned before Excel comes preinstalled on many computers

and last but not least:

- Excel does more than actually putting numbers into rows and columns and sorting them - it can make cake charts, bar charts etc.

I am especially interested in the last option - I suppose we have some Excel enthusiasts here - what kind of tricks would you propose for a list of records? Would you apply any colour/graphic enhancements? If you already catalog your music using Excel, how exactly do you organise the data in there?


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