Do you catalogue your music collection ?

[crmcatee]

I've been promising myself I'ld sit down and do mine (and have been for years).

I've been looking about and see there's a nice easy way to get your CD's into a list by barcode scanning and querying one of many databases out there. They've got some downsides - you need to get your hands on a barcode scanner first of all and then there's the relatively small outlay for the software in the first place.

I'm running Mac's so the software has to be Mac compliant.

Well I found this Delicious Monster which combined both the cataloguing and scanning by using the built in in-sight camera on the mac's. So I downloaded and gave it a run for the limited amount of entries you get (29).

I can say by the end of it - you'll feel like a check out assistant at the supermarket. Nice touch is when it finds it in one of the many databases it looks up - it does a text to speech confirmation.

Well on the sample batch of CD's I'ld been playing recently - it found all of the CD's with the exception of two Grace Jones and one Hawkwind CDs. Not bad for a trial run - it does hint that older CD's may have problems.

I also tried it with some vinyl (the majority of my collection) - one of the major problems is older vinyl doesn't have barcodes. I found some with barcodes and gave them a try. Well if found some of them - Donald Fagen Kamakiriad for example - but couldn't find the artwork for it. (Drag and drop afterwards to add it later). I tried my SimplyVinyl version of Deep Purples Made in Japan - wouldn't read it. Thought it might be the plastic cover - so took it off and no joy. So looks like the Vinyl will still be problematic even if it's got a barcode.

The information within it can be exported into CSV format so you can pull it into Excel or a bunch of other apps. It does have some nice publishing features. e.g. two clicks and I've got this for the 29 entries I've put in.

Sample webpage to I-web



So before I part with a small amount of cash ($40) any other suggestions for cataloguing. ?

[bleesh]

I do mine manually - once you've got up to date then just add new ones to the database/spreadsheet as you get them.

Also has the advantage that if you get burgled and all 523 (at the time) of your CDs go missing, it's useful to give to the insurance company!

[Pupp]

You guys got them stored in alphabetical order too? :

[crmcatee]

Yes - alphabetically - any other way is just sad


I'm trying to save me the hassle of going through hundreds of CD manually. Once the bulk is in - I can easily add new ones to it.

The scanning option just makes life easier.

[gbbird]

I did mine manualy, alphabetically by artist. It was kept reasonably up to date until about a year ago when i stopped adding to it.

Edited by gbbird on Monday 8th February 15:55

[ShadownINja]

Left side of the rack is dance/trance/dnb/hardcore, right side is metal/acoustic/classical. What else do you need?

[Alex]

Why not rip them all into iTunes or Windows Media Player? That way you get an electronic backup and catalogue at the same time.

[crmcatee]

Couple of problems with that.

It's even longer to rip the CD's than it is to catalogue them.
It's still on my machine at home - which incase there's a house fire it's all gone anyway so my insurance company is none the wiser.
Backing it up involves yet another process.
I can't rip my vinyl to itunes. (easily - not that I'ld want to anyway).

[andy tims]

Alphabetically by Band or Artist sir name & then chronologically.

Thats how they are physically stored & captured on a spread sheet.

They're also all in iTunes.

[aveyheks]

Just alphabetically for me by artist.

[crmcatee]

So before we degenerate into the which way do I store our records.

I guess people if they have a list they have manually typed them in. I think I'll spend the $40 and quickly get a list of mine rather than spending forever typing them in.

[esselte]

I have mine on this .Works OK for me..

[JaymzDead]

I did do a database years ago, but it was on an old computer and is now very out of date!

I do have my CDs boxed alphabetically.

[crmcatee]

Well 300+ CD's catalogue, imaged and listed offline in about 90 minutes. Annoying my blues collection of some 100+ CDs don't have any barcodes on them.

The scanning method works well but occasionally it doesn't like reading them. Some just don't scan and out of about 300 odd - about 10 had to be manually entered even though they had barcodes. Two of them picked up the wrong CD from the database. It even picked up a couple of Japanese CD's I had.


I had about 15 CD's that didn't have barcodes at all - all of them early CD's from when they first came out.

Most annoying thing was shops that put their own barcodes over the proper barcode.

I've since found that it also enables scanning of books / dvd's / video games / anything with a bar code it seems..

Thumbs up here. Now I've got something to show the insurance company should there be something major go bad.

[TedMaul]

Alex said:

Why not rip them all into iTunes or Windows Media Player? That way you get an electronic backup and catalogue at the same time.

Yep. I have all my CDs in iTunes and copied to my iPod classic. Then dumped it to a text file and then into excel. Then every time since I just update the spreadsheet, which I keep on a server at work so if we do get burgled....

Besides which it is great taking your entire music collection with you. It does take ages to get them all loaded, i won't pretend it doesn't, but once its done and backed up you just add CDs once you buy them.

[Chim Chim]

If you do use Excel or Word then you can always store it on Google Docs then no worries about losing it!

Edited by Chim Chim on Friday 12th February 16:28