Re: Ordering your CDs
>>
>> The better question is, why the hell are you worrying about fuzzy and
>> meaningless "genre" distinctions? Just put all your cds in alphabetical
>> order, they're easier to find. If you can't decide where to put Styx right
>> now, you're not going to have a clear-cut place to look for them later on
>> either no matter which way you decide.
>>
>> Down with genre theory!
>>
>
>Alphabetical order is the way to go. Then there is no subjectivity involved
>when looking for a CD. As pointed out, you are already confused about
>classification, so why put that margin of error into the equation?
>
Yeah, I prefer alphabetical order. It doesn't take all that
much effort if you just do it over an extended period. I'd never find
anything otherwise with 700+ CDs. Don't you put them in alphabetical
order within the sub-genres already?
The only stumbling block for alphabetical order that I've found
is deciding what to do with CDs that have various bands on them like
"Tales from Yesterday" (the Yes tribute released by Magna Carta).
Do they all go under "V" for Various, or do you put the tribute CDs with
the band that they are a tribute to? Do you put the Majesty bootlegs
in with the Dream Theater CDs? Silly stuff like that. Also, I do
separate out my soundtrack, jazz and classical CDs into separate sections
to make them easier to find (and since I listen to them less often).
Oh, and if you do put them in alphabetical order be sure to get
CD holders that do NOT have those damned slots for each CD -- don't
bother with alphabetical order otherwise. I used to have one of those
and every time I added a new CD I'd have to move every last CD down by
one slot. Argh! Even when you leave a few slots open here and there
you'll eventually have to move a large section. Use bookshelves or
get some CD holders with no slots.
No system is perfect. But, I definitely find it easiest to
keep them in alphabetical order.
The whole alphabetical system has come up recently for me since
I've been ripping all my CDs to a few hard drives to I can broadcast
them via FM throughout my house (my new Chrismtas toy). I've found the
MusicMatch program to be a handy way to do this since it looks up the
CD online at CDDB and writes the artist, album and track names to the
hard drive. It put that "Tales from Yesterday" under Various -- I may
have to move it. Despite having quite a few obscure prog CDs there has
only been one that it didn't find on CDDB -- Curious Works' CD.
Pretty amazing.
I'm up to the letter "F" now. It's pretty cool to tune all my
various radios to 89.9 and then walk around the house listening to the
same music in every room. Now I just need to write a program which will
play random songs from my CDs, allow my wife and I to rate them so my^H^H
our favorite ones will come up more often, and of course change what's
playing from any computer in the house. Hm, a wireless PDA might come
in handy for that...
Steve
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Apr 01 2004 - 19:10:51 EST