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

All the LPs and 12” singles alphabetical. A-L on one room, M-compilations in the other.

45s in roughly themed boxes, reggae, soul, new wave, 60s etc

CDs were alphabetical until I ran out of space so there’s now separate shelving for reggae and jazz.

 

Jazz and not jazz, alphabetical but random order after that. I don’t enjoy putting things away, why make it more work? If it takes a few seconds to find a particular Ornette Coleman album, I deal with it.

 

A-Z. Keep it simple. Gets way too subjective otherwise

 

Me too, in the “Z’s”.

 

I've got Queen, then the blues, then A-Z alphabetical chronological, with classical after. I only have four classical LP's.

 

Only 600 albums in 3 genre's; albums arranged alphabetically. Jazz and Pop by group or artist, Classical by composer.

And I still can't find anything. Oh how I wish I had the room for record store type bins.

 

Collection filed on shelves in following order;;

1) Various artists / Compilations -roughly chronologically
2) All types of Rock, Soul, Electronic, etc - alphabetically by artist, chronologically within artist discography
3) World Music - filed by region: African, Latin / Cuban, Brazilian/MPB, non-Anglo European, Reggae, Asian - alphabetically by artist within region
4) Jazz - alphabetically by artist, chronologically within artist discography
5) Classical - alphabetically by composer

I can never decide where to stick soundtracks ( of which I have only a few)

 

Led Zeppelin gets its own box:

 

I've tried organizing by genre, but then I got hung up on genre-spanning artists like Ray Charles, who did R&B, jazz, country and pop. Likewise, does Sergio Mendes get filed in pop, easy listening, jazz or bossa nova?

 

I have so much Grateful Dead and King Crimson they each get their own space

 

In my collection Wagner , not only has is own section, he has an entire bookcase all to himself

 

all my On-U, Kompakt, Mo Wax, Ninjatune, Dust Science, Skint, Output, Stateside, Warp, Trojan, Soul Jazz, ZTT cd collections are gathered together.
same re my digital organising.
i seem to be able to find things a lot easier if they are on certain record labels.
the rest are filed pretty generically according to their genre mainly.
its a very random system, but somehow i know where most things are - roughly.

 

I don't separate by genre. That's too much of a mess, because I'm attracted to a lot of stuff that is genre-bending, that merges various genres, etc.

The weird thing that I do is that I organize by "families"--so, for example, all Beatles solo albums are filed with the Beatles. Doing it this way can be a bit of a mess, too, but really, it's a mess whatever you do, because if you strictly file by the name the album is credited under you get stuff like albums with the same musicians sometimes being filed under "Mothers" and sometimes being filed under "Frank Zappa."

 

I file Ray under Jazz and can live with that quite easily, Sergio is more problematic, but he currently resides with Brazilian/Latin American which does avoid deciding where else he might go, at the end of the day as long as I know where to look it works for me and I'd rather have all my Ray LPs together than spread over three or four sections.

 

When do I start separating out a genre? Never.

Thank you for asking this question though; it is somewhat comforting to know that my OCD does have some bounds…

 

Classical and Jazz have their own sections.
Everything else is in one section.

 

i had to do the whole record label/genre breakdown thing when i broke the infamous Sonos 65k limit.
Prior to that i just threw all my ripped cds into one music directory with a very simple set up : NAS drive > Sonos Connect > Amp
however, once i broke the dreaded limit (had no idea about it until it was too late), i had to rethink my whole collection.
took many years of reconfiguring both physical and digital, and now i am very happy with it and have bypassed the Sonos limitations.

 

I have never separated genres personally.
Aside from the annoying aspect of having to separate out certain mini-boxes from the main batch of the cd's, merely for space and appearance reasons, I separate very little.

Cd's in a spot.
Records in a spot
Boxes in a couple of spots (out of necessity, rather than want)
Surround sound mixes in two spots, discs in one and boxes in another.
Bluray videos in a couple of spots due to packaging types
Dvd videos in a couple of spots due to overflow, and case size.

I don't separate genre, because it doesn't matter to me..... whether I feel like listening to Mozart or Metallica, they are there sitting in their little M zone.... I don't get the feeling that the genre's fight each other for territory when I'm I'm not in the room

 

I'm trying to understand the logic of some of these categories. For example, how often are you in the 'certain mood' to hear a Light In The Attic or MOV release?

 

In cases like that, I find it easier to just file the Mothers under Z, Wings under McC, that Rain Tree Crow album under Japan, etc.

I otherwise keep bands separate even if they share members, because of what I call the Pete Frame Effect: where do you stop following the family tree?

 

I'll explain: I feel like if I keep these within my standard A-Z sections, they will get forgotten about. My collection is quite large and admittedly, having these sections helps me play some artists I might overlook. I pick up a lot of the MOV titles on clearance from Deep Discount and they come in batches so I rarely get to play them all before they go on the shelf. In the case of LITA, I think they do fine work in genres that are not normally my go to. Often times spinning some of their releases is an exploratory venture for me. So when I have the time to really sit and absorb something new, this is a section I might go to.

I have way too many records and cd's....I find these sections kind of stop me from always gravitating to the same old artists and lead me to explore something fresh or something I haven't played in awhile.

 

This is exactly how I organize as well. I didn't mention in my 1st reply that I also go Alphabetical by Artist, in chronological order by release date...

 

Classical gets its own separation. Everything else is alphabetized. But Original soundtrack recordings of shows also get their own category, filed under "S" for soundtracks. and various artists compilations are also separated, under "V". Bootlegs are separated also. CDs and box-sets that don't fit into the racks also get their own spaces.

 

A to Z by first name initial, various artists then soundtracks. If it's on the shelf I can find it.

 

I can understand why shops or libraries might categorize, but couldn't one just have a single category: my music? My ideal is everything strictly alphabetical (individual first names and 'the', 'thee', 'los', and 'os' not counted) and then within each artist name the releases by date, excepting compilations/'best ofs' which come after proper albums. Various Artists go under V, numbers as if they were spelled out how you would say them (rarely at the start of a group name or alone anyway). The only separations are for 12", 10" 78 singles and 7" singles and EPs etc. (would probably do 10" 33 1/3 albums separate if I had enough of them, but they are in with the 12"s). Cassettes and CDs are separate too...

Okay, maybe keeping it simple is a bit complicated after all...