Ignoring the obvious "MP3 it all and run queries on the id tags" method, which I'm
sure will be covered elsewhere, I've come up with some workable systems. Both of them
realate to abstract properties of the CD.
The Rainbow Method
The CD's are arranged in the order of their spine colour:
Black->
White->
Red-> (
rainbow)->
violet. This requires you only to know the
colour of the box you want and you can jump right into the right part of the collection and
pluck it out. The only problem is that non-rainbow colours (
brown etc), and massively
multicoloured
spines are special cases.
The Mists of Time Method
This is my previous method. I've arranged them in order of either the date of composition
or the
copyright date. For compilations, I've listed them by the latest item. This
works pretty well, since my CD's range from about 1550 -
1999, and so there's a good
range. Of course they do bunch up a bit towards the end. So now to find a CD I just need
to know roughy when it's from. This works fairly well.
Hybrid Cop-out
Now I've all the
classical music in composer-death-date
order as above and the other stuff in boring old alphabetical order. This seems to offer the best of both worlds.
The drawback to all these methods is that they require you to put everything back where
you found it, and have a place for everything and everything in its place. These
concepts are alien to right-thinking people everywhere.
pimephalis thinks that the above methods mark me out as some sort of Nick Hornby/High Fidelity/John Cusack
figure. Hmmm.