Keeping an Ever Growing Record Collection Organized: Exit to Vintage Street

After 4 years of being Japan-less during the pandemic, I finally made it back for the first time in September 2023. I’m now back again for my second trip in a year.

Feeling blessed.

I arrived two nights ago, and am still heavily jetlagged. Woke up at 2:00 a.m. yesterday morning and today, and knew that attempting further sleep was futile. This morning I was reviewing Instagram posts from last year’s trip, and came across this shot from Modern Jazz Jamaica, one of the Sapporo jazz kissas I visited. While there I roughly calculated they had 7,000-plus records stacked about the place. I wondered how they were sorted.

Yesterday I spent time in Shinjuku (where I’m staying my first three nights) and did some jazz record shopping. The question of sorting came up again as I tried to figure out the organization in each store I visited. Some order by artist in general, while others sort first by instrument and then artist. The biggest difference I noticed is that all stores sort alphabetically by first name, not last.

That all got me pondering frequently asked Instagram questions on organizing my music collection, both how I sort physically, and how I catalog and organize everything.

Storage

The way my listening room has evolved, I have three main storage areas. First, there’s the central record and audio cabinet built by my friend Scott of Audio Acoustic Engineering (he also built the record display shelves above the cabinet, and yes, I get asked about the cabinet and displays a lot too). A 6-foot row of records, with storage space for in- and out-of-rotation audio equipment, and built like a tank.

Second, on the left is an adjustable MCM wall cabinet (built by my dad in the early ‘60s) that my mom gave me when she downsized. She’s still using part of the whole unit, so I only got two risers, two dedicated record cases and a couple of shelves. By spacing the record cases just right I’ve got space for four rows of records.

And third, on the right is an alcove into which I built a simple plywood unit with two more rows of records (plus one row on top). I’m not a handyman, so there’s a few millimeters of sag to that unit which bugs me, but it does the job for now. Eventually I’ll invest in some quality wood and fill the alcove with four or five rows all the way from bottom to top.

Recently I also got some ‘70s-styled milk/record crates which I have scattered about the room, and which I use for varied purposes. These come from my friend Tony with a Calgary startup, the HiFi Cabinet Company.

Sorting

So, into that storage my collection goes. Sorting wise, there are a number of levels. Like many collectors, the first sorting level is by genre; my collection is divided into Classical, Jazz, Japanese Jazz (different enough and important enough to be given it’s own category), and Modern/Miscellaneous (everything that doesn’t fit the earlier categories, so Rock, Pop, Soul, R&B, Blues, Country, Electronic, World, and anything else).

Japanese Jazz takes the top row of the MCM rack on the left. Modern/Miscellaneous takes the two saggy-ply alcove rows. Classical takes the row on top of the saggy alcove unit. And Jazz fills the remaining three MCM rows and the AAE cabinet.

How I sort within categories depends on the category. For Classical (119 records and counting), I sort first by composer, then size of ensemble, then main instrument, and finally by performing artist. For example, for Bach I start with solo pieces, then duos, then trios and so on. Solo pieces are ordered by cello, keyboard and violin. And Bach’s Solo Cello Suites are then sorted by artist (Fournier, Starker and Tortellier, with hopefully more to come).

I keep box sets separate from sleeved single and double disk sets, but they’re organized the same way.

For other genres, I sort more simply, first alphabetically by artist and then chronologically by year of release. This certainly makes sense for Japanese Jazz (95 disks) and Modern/Miscellaneous (293 records) as those don’t take that much space.

For Jazz (895 and rising) I’ve experimented a bit with sorting, but have now reverted to the artist chronological system. For a while I was sorting by audiophile vinyl (Analogue Productions, MoFi, Classic Records, Impex, etc.) and non-audiophile. Then I created a separate section for Blue Note Tone Poets. Then I created a separate section for multi-disk releases and box sets.

This all got a bit confusing though as I couldn’t decide whether Blue Note Classics and Acoustic Sounds releases should be filed under “audiophile” or “non-audiophile,” and I also had individual artists filed in two or three different places. Hence the decision to consolidate again and simply sort by artist and session date.

The unfortunate thing about my storage set-up is that, as I keep adding more records to the collection, I’m running out of room. This is where the milk crates come in handy; in one I have a bunch of records I pulled that I haven’t listened to in a while (my “playlist crate”) and in another I have recently purchased disks I want easy access to (they’ll get played multiple times before I file them properly).

Cataloging

One of the best decisions I made when I started collecting vinyl again six years ago was to start cataloging what I had from day one. I’ve heard horror stories from friends who waited until they had hundreds or thousands of records before they started tracking their collection; a daunting task for sure, especially when you have to figure out which release you have of each and every album!

I wanted something that could track pressings, condition and value, and that I could access with my phone when out crate digging (to check if I had something already). I knew my collection was going to grow quickly and that I’d start forgetting what I did and didn’t already have, and didn’t want to end up with too many duplicates.

After researching a bit I decided on Discogs, a user-built database organized around artists, labels, and releases that’s been around since the turn of the millennium. A quick search on the site tells me the database now contains over 16 million recorded releases by over 8 million artists on 2 million-plus record labels.

In addition to cataloging, users can create want lists, estimate collection and individual record values, and buy and sell on the Discogs marketplace. Albums can be assigned to folders (I’ve set up folders for different genres and media types like vinyl, CD, SACD).

The image below shows the most recent purchases in the Japanese Jazz Vinyl folder. We also see I have one item in my shopping cart and I have alerts about availability of several items from my want list. I can access similar information on my phone when I’m away from my laptop.

So, how do you organize your collection, and do you have a cataloging system? If your systems are different, I’d love to hear about them in the comments, or you can message me at @audioloveyyc.

Related Podcasts:

• Podcast: You Had Me at Tone Poet – Episode 3

• Podcast: Vintage Audio Series, Episode 1 of 7: Amplifiers

• Podcast: Hi-Fi and Record Shopping in the Land of the Sun