Your record collecting "quirks"...

My collection used to be alphabetized but after several moves over years, I'm just surprised that I still have all of them, which aren't that many compared to some collectors. Now only sections are alphabetized, mostly what I bought new, but not my used classic rock albums.
I face the inner sleeve opening toward the outer sleeve opening for easy access, except for my most prized records. As a kid, I learned to face the inner sleeve upward so the record wouldn't fall out. What I observed though, was that some of the lyric sleeves would be torn on the side by the weight of the record from handling the album.
My 45 rpm records are alphabetized. There's only about 30 of them. One of them is a jingle from a restaurant.

 

I buy multiple copies of Kenny Rogers records. There's a certain joy I have in buying his albums.

 

Chipmunks

 

I never stack my records horizontally. To my knowledge, that's how they warp and get those rings on the cover.

 

That 45 storage is crazy!...crazy interesting! And it just sounds fun.

All of my McCartney records are under W.

 

I store my UK Beatles LPs, EPs & Singles in chronological order.

 

Yes, I do the same in regards to Paul, except I just file all Wings releases under "McCartney".

 

You didn't trade the Atco for the DE, did you? Please tell me you didn't.

 

I bought four used CDs just yesterday. Are you breaking out in a rash?

 

Zany!

 

Genre is a terrible way to organise ones collection. Its too open to debate, and anyway....who really wants to pigeon hole their music when much of it defies categorisation anyway. And thats how it should be. Is obsession with genre and categorisation primarily an American thing?

 

I have to listen to an entire CD in a sitting.
I never skip tracks.
I never repeat tracks.
I keep all my digipacks in plastic sleeves.
I keep all digipac CD's in plastic inner bags (if the CD tray is missing).
I keep all CD's in boxes in plastic inner bags (which when you're buying King Crimson boxes can get expensive).
I have CD's in alphabetical order by first letter (Elvis Costello under E, David Bowie under B, Led Zep under L.
I keep a band members CD's with the original bands.
I have a "too play": pile near at hand at all times, these are the titles I want to hear in the near future. I really enjoy, occasionally, refiling these once heard, and making a new selection.
I buy some things just because they're weird. I have CD's of Seances, bird song, trains, along with music played on Cups, home made instruments, washing machines and so on. If it strikes me as weird, I want it.

 

Too true!

 

I sort my collection alphabetically by band (Black Sabbath in the B's, Pink Floyd in the P's, etc.), and solo artists by the first initial of their surname (B for Bowie, G for Gabriel, Z for Zappa, etc.), until we get to Alice Cooper, in which case I place the collection under the A's, because I prefer Alice as a band and not a solo entity (my revenge for Dunaway, Buxton, Smith and Bruce).

 

Is that for Wussy or Wonderful?

 

Eh, I'm kinda selectively ambidextrous. I write and play bass guitar and pitch right-handed, and I bat and do archery and shoot guns left-handed. I may be one of those people who is naturally left-handed but got taught to do things right-handed but I don't remember being directed in that way, it just kinda happened.

 

If I get a record as present (fathers day, birthday, Christmas etc) the card I get with the present I store in the record sleeve.

 

My quirk may be that I don't have a defined quirk. I have LPs in two different rooms of the house (each with a turntable), cassettes in two different rooms of the house (each with a cassette player or players), CDs in three different rooms of the house (four if you count a walk-in closet; each with a CD player except for the walk-in closet) and music viddies/DVDs/blu-rays in three rooms of the house (each with a player). I organize loosely alphabetically by my favorite artists and by format. Meaning, most boxed sets are in one room, most CDs are in another (on multiple shelves by genre (meaning, a rock bookcase, a jazz bookcase and a classical shelf plus stacks) artist and number of releases, but chronologically by artist except that studio releases are separate from live releases). LPs are in a large console downstairs (mostly stuff that barely survived fraternity life years ago) and upstairs in crates in rice paper sleeves and outer vinyl covers (some rock that survived college, classical, recent jazz purchases, including a boatload of Sun Ra LPs and other jazz). Basically, it's a safe, organized train-wreck that only I can decipher. Carry on.

 

That's why I'm sure to annoy serious audiophiles. That is my quirk---I know the Atco is better, but overall I decided to collect the DE for Genesis. It would drive me crazy to break the continuity of that remaster series. BTW, I threw out the Atco. It had major skips on 'Ripple" and the title track. I had bought it used for $5 years ago in a used clearance bin (probably due to the discs poor shape)

At least I didn't go in for the later remasters by Nick Davis!

 

I don't file my CD's alphabetically, but by my favorite artists. My top shelf is my literal top shelf---my Top 5 bands:
1. Beatles
2. Led Zeppelin
3. Pink Floyd
4. Rush
5. Grateful Dead

 

I'm an odd one......

I have a little slip of paper in each LP/CD/45 whereupon I rate every song on a 0-5 scale every time I play it. I like to see all of the various dates I played something and how my opinions of songs have changed (or not) over the years.

 

I tell on myself here but I do categorize by genre to a certain extent. In my rock/pop collection (which is mostly LPs), I organize by artist, but I keep my few classical and early music LPs separate, because it's difficult to choose whether to arrange them by artist or composer or ensemble. In my CD collection (which has a much larger amount of classical and early music), I have the pop/rock CDs arranged by artist and the classical/early music CDs arranged roughly by genre unless I have a large number of CDs by a certain artist, such as Ensemble Sequentia. Basically the only goal here is to know where anything is when I want to find it.

 

Probably all kinds of filing related stuff...off hand two CDs by The Story get filed under "B" with Jonatha Brooke's catalog--yet the other half, Jennifer Kimball's solo CD sits alone in "K".

I keep the current year's purchases separated. Traditionally, I would go through the say 50 CDs in the last months of the year and decide which get filed into the big collection and which get traded back. Now, it's nearly all in a little portable vinyl carrier next to my listening seat and it extends to more than a year because I'm just buying SO much less and listening less.

Oh--and being a long time supporter of better digital rez...I put these yellow stickers on the spine of "anything greater than CD"--HDCD, 48khz DualDisc, DVD_Audio, SACD--all qualify.

The vinyl is separated into two cabinets--while it kind of looks like "new....old"...it's not. It's that the left hand side are my reference copies--meaning this vinyl sounds better than the CD on the wall--while the right hand side, I may not think it sounds "better", but I want to have a vinyl copy because it's an album I like and it was probably $3.

 

The worst quirk in my record collecting is that I left the record store empty-handed too many times.

 

Classical discs are filed very specifically:

Composer section (alphabetical by last name then by first name (e.g. Clara before Robert)
Symphonies
Orchestral works (incl. ballet and film)
String orchestral works
Concertos alphabetized by main instrument (triple concertos as the beginning of this section)
Chamber music from largest number of players to smallest
Instrumental alphabetized by instrument
Lieder
Arias, etc.
Opera

If a disc has two composers, I file it under the composer that I prefer or under the composer I have the least number of works for.

Discs with three or more composers go in a section after the composers section. That post-composer section is far more quirky and outside of the scope of this thread.