Organizing record collection: when do you start separating out a genre?

In the past I've separated into various genres such as rock & pop, country, R&B, folk, blues, world, spoken word and jazz, but recently I've been reorganizing and just separating jazz and spoken from everything else. Various artists compilations and soundtracks follow "everything else."

 

Blues
Jazz
Everything else

 

I'll second this.

 

Just classical for the reasons you state. I put soundtracks without a primary artist in with other various artist compilations.

 

Classical
Contemporary Pop (2001-Current)
Instrumental - Non Jazz, Non Classical
Jazz - Large Group incl Big Band
Jazz - Small Group
Vocal - Female
Vocal - Male
Vocal Group
Soundtrack
Frank Sinatra
Nat Cole

 

All of my CDs are in 20 big binders along with the booklets and inserts. My genre separations are very simplistic: Folk, Rock, Prog, Jazz, Classical. Soundtracks and comedy stuff are in the Jazz binder. Everything is alpha and chrono.
I place solo albums after the main band.
However I do make things more interesting by grouping related bands/artists. For example:
The Hollies - Buffalo Springfield - The Byrds - CSN&Y - Poco - Richie Furay - Graham Nash - Stephen Stills - Neil Young
Works for me and I always know where everything is. Did the same thing when all I had was LPs.

 

No genres, my collection is straight alphabetical by artist, then soundtracks alphabetical by movie or show, then label retrospectives alphabetical by label, then various artist compilations alphabetical by title. But just to keep things interesting, I also group side-projects and related artists along with the primary artist. For example, Funkadelic, George Clinton, Bootsty Collins, Parlet, etc. all are shelved with Parliament; The Time, Sheila E, Vanity 6, etc. are all shelved with Prince; Method Man, Raekwon, GZA are in the W’s with the rest of the Wu Tang Clan. It makes sense in my head…

 

I've got a separate section for my Icelandic music (sorted alphabetically by FIRST name, as is the Icelandic custom) and have a separate portable rack for my Exotica (It shuttles between the garage and my basement systems.). Everything else is lumped together in the usual alphabetic way.

 

Alt-country (and, unfortunately, once tagged as such (i.e. Wilco) their albums stay under that flag. Even if a particular album doesn’t fit the genre anymore).
Jazz
Main Rock/Blues
—then, even though I don’t have many:
Soundtracks
Classical
Christmas

 

Jazz, classical, and soundtracks get split out. All other record albums are filed by artist.

 

I shelf "classical," jazz/big band/swing, Christmas/Halloween, world/ethnic, soundtracks/cast albums/TV themes all separately.

Everything else is "popular" music.

VA comps go at the tail end of the appropriate genre.

 

On my lifetime, it all came down to how to put the most amount of the same records into the same shelf, so I would have a reason to set the rest out (such as "mainstream" vs. "classical". And of course, the further I went, the more I had to re-think it.

At last incarnation before I started putting them in storage I was up to putting pop, rock, jazz, country and oldies in the main shelves I'd built right after college...and then boxes out of the way for Christmas music, soundtracks, spoken/novelty (I was in radio, I had a lot of those that overfilled the box), radio shows, radio production records and sfx stuff in another box, box sets in yet another box (ironic, I know...) and eventually, classical and modern "serious" music, synth and electronic in another box.

Yet still I ended up with stupid little irritations, such as half the Mancini's on the top shelf, and the other half way over on the other side, starting the second shelf...the Zappa's on a completely different shelf (because that was easier than splitting up half the Zappas and putting them with the rest of the Z's).

As for the CD's, I now have four different places to put those...and the ones I use the least, are in two or three places here in this office. But at least they're not getting in the way of the "main" collection.

Once you make a plan or a policy, the only constant...is, that you continue to re-think it.

 

Blues, jazz, VA, artist tributes & genre tributes, Memphibian CDs have their own place, Art Pepper and Miles Davis and James Brown all have their own spaces on CD but not on LP; it's all space driven.

 

I broke out certain artists, companies and genres once they got large enough so that it was easier to find things when I was in a certain mood. Currently they are:

Heavy Metal
Soul
Soundtracks
Compilations
WB Loss Leaders
Waxwork
MOFI
MOV
The Jacksons
Jazz
Acoustic Sound Series
Tone Poet
Blue Note Classics
Blue Note 80
Holiday
Light in the Attic
Stones and solo
Beatles and solo
The Who
Pink Floyd
Queen
Kiss
Intervention
Autographed
Third Man Vault

Everything else is A-Z with certain artists getting there own tab such as Bowie, The Cure, T. Rex etc...

 

Alphabetical order for everything, first name. It gets tricky for classical (credit the composer) and even trickier for soundtracks (Michel Legrand's ost go to M. But Hair goes to H).

 

Alphabetical by artist or composer (classical) or by movie name (soundtracks)
Organized by genre's, jazz, jazz vocals, rock, soul, world (including reggae), soundtracks, classical, country/folk, blues, electronica, 12 inch 45's,

 

Various Artist compilations, that's it.
Everything else is together.

 

I'm sure the way Ive organised my collection is influenced by the layouts of record shops I would frequent when younger (still do, obviously, but my habits were formed decades ago). 60s, 70s ROCK. 80s ROCK/POP. JAZZ. INDIE. NEW AGE/AMBIENT. Etc. 12 inch singles have their own shelves, split into 80s, 90s etc.

At the moment I'm in a quandary as Ive just purchased my first Zappa lp, Hot Rats, because of the Beefheart connection and WANT to place it in the Beefheart section, but have a terrible feeling it belongs under 'Z' at the end of 60s, 70s ROCK. Perhaps the very definition of a 1st world problem?

 

Beatles, solo Beatles, everything else.

 

I only separate out genres if they don't fit into my alphabetical-by-artist organizational scheme.

The only genres I currently separate out are classical (organized by composer rather than performer), soundtracks & cast albums (organized by title), and multiple-artist compilations (also organized by title). Oh, and my Disney theme park CDs get their own section, since they don't really fit into any other category. I've got somewhere in the neighborhood of 13,000 CDs and it this system works quite well for me.

 

I separate out:
Compilations
Soundtracks (Which are further separated into scores by a single composer, various artist soundtracks, and Italian soundtracks)
Library music
Holiday
Comedy
Classical (by composer, by performer, or various)
Spoken word / esoterica

Everything else is alpha by artist.

Then there's my wife's thousands of folk LPs and CDs that are organized geographically in a system only she understands.

 

Classical. (Random - small number)
Jazz. (by series e.g Tone Poet)
Blues.
Compilations.
Female Vocals (solo) because I have a lot. (alphabetical)
General Rock/Popular. (alphabetical)

 

I tend to separate artists if I get a lot of CDs by that artist,
Elvis Presley
Beach Boys
Bach
Zappa
Beatles
Who
Richard Thompson
Frank

By Genre
Rock
Classical
Folk
Blues
Comedy
Soundtrack

 

This.
I’ve got 5000+ lps with so much blurring of genre boundaries it’s best to keep it simple.
And then of course alphabetical by artist and chronological for those artists’ collection.

 

It all goes A-Z. If I can’t remember the artist then I guess they never really mattered