CD Inventory Project

Organizing music madness

by j. brotherlove

I’m re-committing myself to cataloging my CD library (over 1000 at this point). I’ve wanted to do it for years. After reading about Jessica’s burglary, I have a new sense of urgency. Plus, I like the ability to know how many songs I own have the word “love” in the title.

A long time ago, I created an Access database but it got so tedious, I never finished. Good for me I didn’t, because CDDB/Gracenote wasn’t around. Now, with the right software, I can simply put a CD in the computer and have all the fields filled automatically.

Aah… but which software?

Jason is using a spreadsheet to track his collection. I need more functionality than that. Michelle downloaded Orange CD but, she isn’t sold on it yet.

I’m auditioning the following solutions (feedback appreciated):

• CATraxx (Has the most accolades. I’ll probably go with this.)
• Music Catalogue Master (Runner-up, so far.)
• Music Collector (Haven’t tried this one, yet.)
• Music Organizer Deluxe (How do they expect to sell software without screenshots?)

Oh! And I’ll try to remember to bring my earplugs from out of the car so I can take a pic for George’s Headphone Project while I’m cataloging.

Oooh, CATraxx looks pretty good. I notice they also have a program for DVD organization. Interesting…definite possibility because I am still unsure of Orange CD.

i need some mac solutions…bugger.

Here’s a Mac solution: I’ve been cataloging what’s left of Jessica and my collection with FileMaker. I wrote an AppleScript that grabs the artist, album, and track names from iTunes (which does me the favor of looking them up in CDDB).

It’s not perfect, but it’s extensible, so it *will* be perfect by the time I’m finished with it. (There’s another version of the same thing available here: http://www.malcolmadams.com/itunes/scripts/scripts03.shtml — it has loads more features, but unfortunately also seems to have a bug which prevents it from actually working).

Thanks, Brendan… Keep this up and I may consider buying one of those Mac thingies.

www.synapsa.com - Visitrax. I’ve been using it (and its predecessor, PLIST in DOS) for years and years and years. It happily uses CDDB but if you need to hand-enter data it tries to make it as painless as possible. Very cool.

I use WhereIsIt? for my cataloging. It works for all media(audio cds, mp3s cds, programs, folders on your computer zips etc)
I just noticed a lot of mac references though so perhaps I am not being helpful to you . I think WhereIsIt? is PC only