This could well be a discussion for dinosaurs who still like having their music on CD's, but I will still ask the question. Do you all use a classification system for your CD's, albums, tapes... ? Alphabetical classification? Or according to the year, or any other kind of system to find a song quickly? Cajun and Zydeco recordings on separate shelves? (I don't have many Zydeco recordings, so they are just among the Cajun ones).
Suppose you're looking for a song or you'd like to find all the versions of a song that you're sure you have somewhere, what do you do?

I tried to put them in order a few years ago by using Excel. But it quickly became a real chore entering all those CD's and updating the database. Besides, the "to be filed" CD's regularly piled up and were soon mixed with the others (the "already filed") that I was listening . And so there was this new headache, sorting out the whole mess.

Now I simply have two categories: old recordings and all the others. The frontier is rather vague and "all the others" is a pretty wide category :). I set the limit roughly around Mark Savoy. There is before and after MS. Most of the time I have to trust my memory and often resign myself to not finding what I'm looking for. Any other brilliant ideas?

Christian

Hello, Christian

This is not an endorsement or sales pitch for Apple, but
I have downloaded all of my CD's to iTunes and when I sync my iphone or ipod, the menu's on both will allow me to search all of my music library by song title, artist, or album. It is very very efficient fast and useful.

And the library allows me to work with my Amazing SloDowner program as well.

Hope this helps.
Charlie

CB is right on the money. Anyone not using itunes is living in the dark ages. Get on board Christian bite the apple its the way of the future, even for cajun music

I separate the Cajun from the Zydeco, and then alphabetize them.

I alphabetize, but then that really doesn't help much when I can't remember the name of the artist, the name of the song, or which CD it's supposed to be on...

DP

First I aphabatize by artist. Then I sort by first issued to most recently issued.

My sock drawer is sorted by color, then by fabric.

I always ask the bagger in the grocery to sort my purchases by alpha, by size and alternate in paper and plastic.

I have been observing my inherent nature recently and am discovering some anal tendencies.

Christian,

Download I tunes. Burn all your cds to your computer. At first it will put them under some random listing like folk or world, but you can right click on a highlighted album, go to the info tab and change the genre to Cajun. You can also create a custom Genre. I created one for Zydeco and Creole. It really is a bad ass music organizing program.

If you are looking for a song, go under the cajun/zydeco/creole genre then type in the name of the song you are looking for and VOILA! all the songs, albums, or artists by that search word will pop up.

get it. its calling your name. Then, if you're like me, you won't be worried about scratching your precious cds that you spent hundreds of dollars on.

Man, I posted on this topic earlier (and a couple others, I might add), but it never made it on. Since then, many people have echoed what I was going to say, which is get your CD's into your computer.

But I use Windows Media Player and an MP3 player 'cuz I hate Itunes: it screws with other programs and it's always screwing up. WMP is pretty solid.

Putting on your computer is cool, but don't get rid of the CDs. One computer crash and "bam" just like that, you just lost 40 years of music collecting.

Correct DP! But for around $100 you can get a very small 1 Terabyte back-up drive and save your computer files to it.

Thank you all, and thanks Charlie and Tcadien for the suggestion.
I'm not familiar (to say the least) with all those i-something; but, from your explanations I think I should give it a try. As I understand it, you never have to type anything, right? Once a CD is in the file, and if I am connected to Internet, the name of the artist and the list of songs will appear automatically.

DP, I certainly don't intend to get rid of my CD's and albums. I do beware of my abilities with computers. In fact, I'd be even happier if I could print out that list.

Christian

Yes, Christian...I have not had any problems with i-tunes. I say give it a shot!

Nothing serious, Antoine. Just a well-ordered existence.

iTunes is ok for managing music, especially if you already own an i-device, but if you want something more powerful for managing and sorting music, try MediaMonkey (not an endorsement, I just like music...and it's free).

It does batch editing easily...have 30, 50, 1000 cajun albums in which the genre is listed as folk? Select them all with a minimum amount of clicking, type 'cajun', done.

It handles multiple-genres. For example, in the genre field I might tag louisiana music as:

'louisiana; cajun; accordion; dance hall',
'louisiana; swamp pop; soul',
'louisiana; zydeco; accordion; triple row', 'louisiana; new orleans; brass band; soul',

and I can then search and sort for any of these tags separately or together.

'louisiana' brings them all up,
'accordion' brings up 'cajun' and 'zydeco',
'soul' brings up 'new orleans' and 'swamp pop', etc.

(Itunes treats multiple entry fields as one string--'louisiana; cajun; accordion; dance hall' shows up just like that, one long genre vs. four genres in MM).

MediaMonkey also has lyrics and comment support, in which lyrics and or comments can be searched for and added to mp3 files for viewing on players. In addition, it does a lot more...searches for and adds album art, creates reports (excel, word, html etc), provides statistics (# of tracks, artists, genres, etc), checks and corrects case, tags from filename, and more, and it handles laaaarge libraries without a problem--I have over 2oo,ooo mp3s and MM runs smoothly.

Many interesting features. I'm going to try this one too. Thanks.

Yes, it's great for creating reports/lists in excel, word, html etc of the tracks, with metadata, you already have. It beats having to type everything in manually.

I have downloaded it.
When I first opened it, it automatically made a list of all the music scattered in different files on the PC. Great!
I have not yet explored all the possibilities of this application, but it seems pretty easy to use. I am feeding the animal for now.
Merci encore.

Yes, I have everything in Excel.
Cd's with all the songnames, so I can search easy for versions from certain songs.
Also all the downloads from neal I put in an Excel sheet.
It's some work on the PC, but it's very easy for me.