Advice: How Do You Guys Organize Your Collection

[ronboogie]

Hey guys...

I have to reorganize my vinyl collection. It has just outgrown itts original design. How do you guys organize your collections? By artist, label, style, release date???

I need something easy and functional beccause I have bought a lot of new music lately and I got stuff all over the place.

[LEONARD REMIX RROY]

When I did the vinyl thing, I had mine arranged by BPM and type of music, House w/ House, Rap w/ Rap etc.

I played out of 2 crates, crate 1...100 - 118 BPM crate 2...119 - 146 BPM.

[simon b]

Mostly by genre in a somewhat chronological order. Within that separate sections for certain artists, producers and labels. Also separated by album and 12". Current stuff is in crates or on the floor, older stuff filed in two Ikea Expedits and about ten crates. Stuff I rarely use or I'm going to get rid of in about a dozen or so boxes in two closets.

My record room is overflowing at this point and I need to do some serious thinking about what's going to stay and what's going to go. Lately I've been trying to get rid of one old record for every new one I bring in.

[DaveR]

I use a bunch of these shelving units from IKEA - 6 shelves high, and 36" wide they hold 65lbs per shelf (so you can get about 2,000 records per unit) - although I did have to customize it b/c the shelves are 12" deep (got some planks cut at Home Depot, and nailed them in as bookends). Basically, I shelve about 10-12,000 records in these things and everything cost me under $200.

http://www.ikea-usa.com/PIAimages/13449_PE093189_S3.jpg

As for arranging:

On the shelves I have the bulk of my records stored by Main Title, alphabetically. Then a section for Albums.

Outside of the shelves I have a bunch of crates for Classics & special events. And then there is my new stuff, that I keep right near the 1200s.

I keep every record in a MSAccess database - logged by title, artist, label & year (so I can do a search on any criteria, and find the record in minutes) <--- although this is a work in progress, I'm only about 20% through my collection (it's gonna take months ... ugh !)

Hope this helps !!!

DR

[JMJ]

Everything is organized by BPM. I've always done it that way, although I keep classics separate from the newer stuff. Much easier to remember numbers than titles......JMJ

[Moksha]

I first divide by genre: house, classics, hip-hop, other.

Within the genres, I file by label. Within labels, I file by artist.

[lyot]

i'm down with what the big guys do ..: range it by bpm..It makes you a better dj.. smile.gif

[JMJ]

Originally posted by lyot:
i'm down with what the big guys do ..: range it by bpm..It makes you a better dj.. smile.gif I don't know that it makes you a better DJ, but it makes everything easier to find. I'm not good with the names of some of the newer stuff, so it's much easier to remember BPM......JMJ ;)

[lyot]

Originally posted by JMJ:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by lyot:
i'm down with what the big guys do ..: range it by bpm..It makes you a better dj.. smile.gif I don't know that it makes you a better DJ, but it makes everything easier to find. I'm not good with the names of some of the newer stuff, so it's much easier to remember BPM......JMJ ;) </font>[/QUOTE]i was not totally serious, but on the other hand : ranging according BPM's makes it easier to select the next record you wanna play..Before it happened quite often to me that I selected a record that had to be pitched down/up too much for it to sound acceptable..Now, the flow is much better.. If you have a good memory, one might not need BPM classifications, but I haven't got a good memory..

[Woody Rosen]

My shit gets reshuffled every time I play out. I go through and just grab records and throw them in a crate to take with me. I never put them back in order. It gets bad sometimes, like I'll want to find a record, and I'll have NO idea where it is.

[Jacques de Doozu]

Originally posted by Woody Rosen:
My shit gets reshuffled every time I play out. I go through and just grab records and throw them in a crate to take with me. I never put them back in order. It gets bad sometimes, like I'll want to find a record, and I'll have NO idea where it is. same here...

[Huey P. Freeman]

Originally posted by Woody Rosen:
My shit gets reshuffled every time I play out. I go through and just grab records and throw them in a crate to take with me. I never put them back in order. It gets bad sometimes, like I'll want to find a record, and I'll have NO idea where it is. Me too. graemlins/cool_shades.gif

[Brian]

mine are in one big mess and i use a divining rod to find what i need

[Woody Rosen]

Originally posted by Eargasm:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Woody Rosen:
My shit gets reshuffled every time I play out. I go through and just grab records and throw them in a crate to take with me. I never put them back in order. It gets bad sometimes, like I'll want to find a record, and I'll have NO idea where it is. Me too. graemlins/cool_shades.gif </font>[/QUOTE]glad to know im not the only one.
graemlins/beerchug.gif

[houseaddict]

The "pull out, put back where ever" method is VERY common. I too used to be guilty of that, I oved a little over a year ago and took advantage of that opportunity to organize the dominant portion of my collection which is house.

I have mine organized in a large ikea cubby-like structure. The upper cubby's are arrnaged by label A-Z, starting with Africanism and ending with Yellorange. There are a couple of variations like Joey Negro, for instance, which I have in the label section under N rather than Z for Z records. The records that I have which are on labels which are not duplicated in my collection, I have arranged alphabetically by artist. There are a couple of atrists like Kenny Bobien and Glenn Underground for instance that I have multiple records on different labels, so I just throw them all together in the artist section maintaining the alphabetic structure of course.

As for the hip-hop, classics, reggae and rock, they are all still waiting for me to rescue them from moving boxes parked neatly behind my couch, out of sight.

I hope this helps!!

[GrantB]

Originally posted by lyot:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by JMJ:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by lyot:
i'm down with what the big guys do ..: range it by bpm..It makes you a better dj.. smile.gif I don't know that it makes you a better DJ, but it makes everything easier to find. I'm not good with the names of some of the newer stuff, so it's much easier to remember BPM......JMJ ;) </font>[/QUOTE]i was not totally serious, but on the other hand : ranging according BPM's makes it easier to select the next record you wanna play..Before it happened quite often to me that I selected a record that had to be pitched down/up too much for it to sound acceptable..Now, the flow is much better.. If you have a good memory, one might not need BPM classifications, but I haven't got a good memory.. </font>[/QUOTE]I've had the same experience with BPMing my music recently. As I get better at remembering the tempos, things beccome easier to find. It's nice to finally have a clue. It also contributes to some fresh mixes that I wouldn't have thought of otherwise. Thanks Obsidian for finally talking me into it! This his been a big help with the classics, which is what I'm playing mostly. ~120 house lives seperately in the expidit with the old pseudorandom classification scheme.