[thechat] keeping track of music?

[Shirley Kaiser, SKDesigns]

Just curious about how you all keep track of your music, whether music on
your computer(s) or in physical collections. Have you been really good and
set up a systemized catalog?

I've only mildly glanced at RealPlayer's sorting capabilities, Windows
Media Player, and other programs that will search your hard drive. I guess
I don't necessarily want to be tied in to a particular program for this.

I suspect the database folks out there are much more inclined to have a
good searchable database set up. For myself, though, that's been a nice
dream that I'd love to do but haven't yet done.

I'm curious about what you music lovers have done about tracking,
cataloging your ever-growing music collections.

Just as many of us have over the years, I've got a HUGE task at hand with
countless vinyl records, tapes, CDs, DVDs, and then all the MP3s and other
music clips on my computer.

For my physical collections, I have them sorted by type -- vinyl records,
tapes, CDs, DVDs. From there I've separated my "Classical" music from
everything else (my master's degree is in piano performance -- classical
music... so I have a huge classical collection in addition to everything
else). Everything is sorted alphabetically from there, usually by artist or
composer.

I've ended up doing something quite similar with my MP3s on my computer,
with directories for each artist or composer.

Maybe it's just a dream, but I'd love to one day have a searchable database
of all my music, including all my piano music and other music scores. I'd
love to type in a search and get the results for "Rubenstein" or "James
Taylor" or whatever...

I'd love to hear what any of you have done.

Part of my incentive is that at long last I finally have broadband and a
whole new world of videos and music is opening up here that wasn't worth
trying with a 56K modem. ;-)

Warmly,
Shirley
--
Shirley E. Kaiser, M.A.,  SKDesigns  mailto:skaiser at skdesigns.com
Website Design, Development      http://www.skdesigns.com/
WebsiteTips: Design Resources  http://www.websitetips.com/
Brainstorms and Raves  http://www.brainstormsandraves.com/
WaSP Steering Committee       http://www.webstandards.org/