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Do you document your recordings?

Red Stick

Red Stick

Well-Known Member
I want to document my LP, CDs, etc into a seachable database, but I am not having too much luck finding a template for MS Excel, MS Access, or Quattro. What I would like to to is enter artist, title and songs, and be able to search them.

Anybody have any suggestions?

Thanks
 
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I used OrangeCD for a while, but eventually gave up - too much work to enter by hand, and too many errors and ambiguities in the automatic internet search. If there's a simple solution out there, I'd like to know about it.
 
IIRC, you could do it in Excel, but I forgot how.....

I will try to find out, because I need to do it, too....
 
I use MS Works, and the Database app (which can read Access files) has a "CD and tape inventory" template. :) Works for me!
 
I just used Access and entered my own headers .... Artist, Title, Year, Label, Notes. It's searchable by individual header. Works well but is time consuming to manually enter all of the info. I did data entry whilst archiving into FLAC files for my Squeezebox media setup.

I also use a nifty directory program called "Your Dir" that gives a windows directory printout of all my PC music files. Works great.
 
I've been thinking about this myself, after spending about a half an hour last weekend searching for an LP that I knew I owned but couldn't remember where I'd stashed it! I would not recommend a spreadsheet if you want to do much searching. It would be simple to write an Access DB from scratch (at least for me, but I'm an Access database programmer), but the data entry involved would take a while, and that has kept me from doing it. For CDs I've burned pretty much everything I own into iTunes so I use that as my database but it would be great if there was a way to access the Gracenote database that iTunes uses and do something custom... I was doing a search on Gracenote's site and came across Readerware (www.readerware.com); has anyone used their CD/LP database? Looks like pretty reasonable prices for their products, and I like the idea of using a barcode reader to scan in new CDs.
 
My wife is a computer geek, she set up a cool database. After a short while I realized it was easier to put the cd's and lp's away in order and just look in the rack.

edit, I have thousands of each.
 
If you want free, just use Excel and make up your own spreadsheet with the info you want. Pretty straightforward.

If you want something really full-featured and well done, and are willing to pay for it, I highly recommend Fredrik Norbakke's program called CATraxx for $40. You can read up on it and download a full-featured evaluation copy here: http://www.fnprg.com/catraxx/index.html No affiliation, no kickbacks, etc. :D

A lot of people will say "why should I spend $40 for software to tell me what CDs (or LPs or tapes) I have", and that's a legitimate question. And it can be a LOT of work to put all the info you want in to the database to get it set up.

I think it's worth it for lots of reasons.

Over the many years I've collected, I've spent over $40,000 on music. $40 is 0.1% of that, peanuts.

If anything were to happen to all of my music, I have all the info I need to go to my insurance company with for a claim.

I know how many albums I have in what format, and can look up anything in a few seconds. I can look up by artist, album name, label, year released, media format (CD, LP, 45, R2R, cassette, etc.), and catalog number.

I can look up tracks individually, and see who did it and what album its on.

I can store lyrics for tracks (have only done this for a few tracks).

I know how much I paid for something, how much it's worth, and when and who I bought it from.

I can look at the album art for almost anything I have.

If I wanted to, I could enter the location of each item (I'm not quite that OCD yet though).

If you ever loan out items (:yikes:), you can enter who, what and when.

I can make custom reports to print out for the rare occasion that I go out to shop. That's actually what first started me on cataloging my music on the computer, after I went out and bought a second copy of something for about the fourth or fifth time. Heh. :stupid:

I used a plain text file at first (1992), then Word, then Excel, then wrote my own FoxPro database application (1993), tried several commercial programs a few years ago, then settled on CATraxx a few years ago. Overkill for a lot of people I'm sure, but I've got almost 3,500 entries (mostly CDs and LPs) and 42,000 tracks in my CATraxx database. It is an awesome program and well worth the money. And the developer's support is outstanding, with a very good support forum and frequent program updates. I just can't recommend it enough.

Okay, gettin' down off my soapbox now.
 
I second the recommendation of CATraxx. I've been using it for a few years now. Excellent product and awesome support and responsiveness to customer feedback by developer Fredrik Nordbakke as mentioned above. I've tried a number of the popular competitors including the one named after a citrus fruit and IMO CATraxx beat them hands down.
 
I have comparatively few LPs and CDs, under 700 total (I think), so I know what I have and what I don't have just by memory. I think that cataloging them makes sense, but since what I own is neither rare nor especially valuable, I don't really see the reason. Although, just out of curiosity, I am downloading the trial of CATraxx. I assume I will be shelling out $40 by the end of the month. :thmbsp:
 
I use MS Excel to keep track of my quadraphonic records and tapes as well as my multi-channel SACD, DVD-A and dts-CD music. I take the list with me when I go to the record store so that I do not end up with duplicates.
 
I also use Cattrax.It is handy to have a printed list in hand when I purchase music.I do'nt mind having two copies but I have bought a third by mistake.Also helps me keep track of what is on what media.
 
I use OrangeCD. It has as much or as little as you want to put in. The internet search loading isn't very good, but it can read CD's and setup the tracks. I still type in quite a bit and also put in the covers.

You can also upload your collection free to their site.
Here's mine for example.

http://mygenres.com/markstunes/
 
I downloaded CATraxx to try it out. After skimming through the documentation (which there is a lot of), I gave it a try with a couple of random CD's and LP's.

CD's:
Arrested Development - 3 Years, 5 Months And 2 Days In The Life Of ...
BeauSoleil - Cajun Conja
Garrison Keillor - Life These Days

LP's:
The Frost - Rock and Roll Music
Jeff Beck - Blow By Blow
X - Under The Big Black Sun
The Moody Blues - A Question of Balance (Japanese)
The Blasters - Non Fiction

The results:

Scanning the CD's is simple, and it found all of the info through CDDB
For the LP's, it found all of the correct info on Jeff Beck.
It found the album and tracks for X, but did not list track times
It found reissued CD's of The Frost (no track times) and Moody Blues (Japanese)
It found other albums by the Blasters, but could not find Non Fiction on any of the searches.

Overall, I am pretty impressed. Even though I needed to add some info for the LP's (track time), it beats typing in the songs and everything else.

I think I give CATraxx a :thmbsp:
 
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