For example I've got plenty of the "Pickin on" series of cds. They're the banjo versions of Creedence or The Who or Led Zep. I always file those with the artist being paid tribute. I also have String Quartet and Piano versions of hard rock bands such as Metallica. They too go with the band being covered.

However it gets a bit trickier when you have things like the all Beatle record "Meet The Smithereens." Where does that go? I have other Smithereens cds so I slot it there, but that throws out the logic of all my other tribute cds! Oh no!

By the way I file Los Lobos under L for Los. Your reasoning on why I shouldn't makes sense but what people in other countries do is really none of my business. I don't tell them what to do.

I'd go for T, Fraser. And then I'll get my brother to come round to your house. He likes to point out that I have Little Richard under L, Howlin' Wolf under H, but Muddy Waters under W.

I have a couple of Ennio Morricone soundtracks. I can never decide whether they should go under M - he certainly deserves it - or by the title of the film. Problem is, then I'm going for alphabetical, which means Once Upon A Time In America goes before Once Upon A Time In The West. Which is just plain wrong.

Hasn't everyone ripped them all into iTunes by now?

said shelves do not involve the lunacy described above.

Maybe my time will come....

What do you do with A Flock...er I mean A Certain Ratio? If the definite article gets dumped, what happens to its indefinite sister?

What do you do with numerals? Are 10 c.c. and 10,000 Maniacs in a non-alphabetic section of their own - either before A or with the compilations after Z - or do you file them under "T" for "ten"?

HMV used to have rules on this more detailed than The Economist style guide, but I can't for the life of me remember what they were. Mr H, perhaps?

this lass here for some advice

http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/barmy-record-filing-system

Put 'em on the shelf as you acquire them, unsorted. When you want music, a brief neck twisting along the lines will nearly always deliver up something that's half way between a conscious choice and a shuffle. A blind fumble for the first one to offer its edge up to your fingernails will often result in a mood changing listening experience you would never have deliberately selected.

The only disadvantage is that when you do want to find that specific obscure Incredible String Band title, it'll take you 45 minutes of searching and you'll need a chiropractor visit to fix your neck afterwards.

perfectly sums up the psyche of the Word readership.
Fantastic stuff.

is one I suffer from - do you file them under I for Iggy along with all solo stuff or under P for Pop along with all his solo stuff but then...Stooges were only Iggy & The Stooges, not Iggy POP and the Stooges so they really shouldn't be filed under P at all or do you put all Stooges separately under S even Raw Power which is Iggy & The Stooges...oh I need a lie down...

Is the filing for you or to facilitate others checking up on the hipness quotient?

...every time my wife adds CDs to the collection - she is a list obsessive and maintains lists of everything and, having listed, she files. The problem comes about because she and I have different understandings of the alphabet and, some 500 CDs later, I have lost the will to argue my corner. So when I want to play a particular CD - in the car, say - it can be like a blessed treasure hunt, trying to track the damn thing down.

At least on the iPod, I know where I am - most of the time!

do my filing as though Nick Kent or David Hepworth were popping round to interview me at given moment - so lots of prominence for those records with hipness quotient and Status Quo's Greatest Hits up in the loft.

My view is you should go with the surname. Sister may be a genuine honorific because she is (was?) a nun, or merely an indicator of status within her community.
Both Dr John and Taj Mahal in my system go under D and T respectively as that is the brand name. Muddy Waters however does go under W because when I first heard of him I'd assumed he was Mr Waters and that's stuck with me ever since. I'd guessed from when I first heard of him (on the inner sleeve advertising CBS used to use for their artist's records) that Taj Mahal was a nom de guitare and he wasn't Mr Mahal.

When i was a teenager working in Virgin Megastores I remember a heated discussion with our manager about filing. It all stemmed down to the fact that I had niaively filed the Van Morrison albums in V alongside the Van Halen albums.

Not knowing any better (and never having heard of anybody with "Van" as a first name) i had assumed Van Morrison's full name to be something along the lines of "Eddie Van Morrison"...

I know better these days...

What to do with Dr John Plays Mac Rebennack? I have it under D with the others.

Other conundrums I have spent far too much time worrying about:

The various recording of Elvis Costello. You could argue that it should be E when he is with the Attractions, as the name of the band is Elvis Costello and the Attractions. Common sense says all his albums go under C. See also Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, the Tom Robinson Band, etc.

Why do Edwyn Collins solo albums sit next to Orange Juice, but Lou Reed and John Cale go under R and C and not next to the Velvet Undergound? I'm not entirely sure, but they do and it makes a kind of sense (to me at least).

All the Iggy, Stooges etc stuff goes under P without a doubt. But Elvis under E or P? He's currently under P but I'm not entirely comfortable with it.

Sylvain Sylvain's solo album goes next to the New York Dolls, but Buster Poindexter goes under J with the other David Johansen stuff.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying (I think) if you set too many hard-and-fast rules records will end up where they should not naturally be. Let the alphabet be your guide, but also employ a modicum of common sense and flexibility.

Having said that, my rules fall apart in the VA section, stored at the end of the collection naturally, where I group by genre - blues, soul etc. Something I would never do elsewhere, but it works for me.

I agree it's a volume issue, you get to a stage when you need some sort of order to be able to find anything in a hurry.

What's the 'proper' way to file classical music? By composer? Orchestra? Conductor? I assume it's by composer, but that's the opposite of the norm in popular music, where the performer is used, and therefore filing 'Eine Kleine Nacht Musik' under 'M' for Mozart is surely like filing Scott Walker's Sings Jacques Brel under 'B'.

Or perhaps I'm allowed two different filing systems in one collection?

SEA or STE?

thanks for settling a pointless text argument!

...anybody care to put them in alphabetical order? Usual rates.

Due to the space restrictions of flat living, I burned my cds and removed my cd collection into some big leather wallets.

These are alphabetised but I left some room to allow for future purchases by letter & sparated various artists / original soundtracks (but Magnolia with Aimee Mann vis a vis above comments)and free cds as a separate section.

The issue I have is with Cds with cardboard covers (Now Hear This included), great for the environment but I can't bring myself to give up the covers so this means I have a separate (random) filing system for these. Also, as they are always to hand, they get greater playing time than they relatively should for the proportion of these involved.

That's a whole part of the conundrum I had forgotten. The big box of CDRs in the garage (slim boxes, always slim boxes for these)comprising copies of the decent tracks from cover discs* and downloaded odds and ends. Whole album downloads get a "normal" box and a place inside on the shelves. The garage is my back up hard disc for Mr I-Pod, not least as he is now full. So far the computer hard disc seems to have room for it all, hooray.
*Originals get trashed, unless it is the "old" decent single artist covers compilations from Slomo and Unshod. They get to stay indoors too.And to think you used to have to buy 2 copies of the bloody mag to get both volumes. I was well glad they didn't try that trick on the recent largely execrable White Album vols 1 and 2, from which only about 6 tracks lasted the course. Mind you,the original wasn't all that hot, either....(Ducks)

Actually makes me glad that I am not the only person who puts thought into such matters.
I generally am a straighforward alphabetical man, on surname and in chronological order.
However, artists such as Joe Pernice cause difficulty.
Whether Scud Mountain Boys and Chappaquidick Skyline? (erstwhile guises)
The former goes under Sc, but the latter (uniquely and somewhat controversially) goes under Pe!

has a great system of filing MY cds. Chuck the whole lot in a pile and shuffle them like a pack of playing cards. C'est la vie say the old folks...

but I do have a slight, erm, premature filing problem that causes the wife no end of grief.

If I buy a new CD I tend to stick it into iTunes then iPod and file it away pretty quickly leading to wife saying a few days later:

- Didn't you say you were going to buy the new so-and-so (good band...) CD the other day?
- Oh, yes, sorry already filed it.
- Well I wanted to listen to it but couldn't find it and not only that but it's lucky I never bought a copy aswell then.
- Sorry, the wife.

Now I have to think of having some sort of "holding area" for newly purchased CD's - but how do I file those...alphabetically or by date of purchase...?

...or in the car. Mind you, Mrs Path has ones I let her listen to in her car which have never ever been seen again.
(Yes, I did say "let": has anyone else ever made this mistake?)

do seem to have a much more healthy attitude towards the filing of records, I envy them.

It doesn't help my borderline OCD to have a wonderful wife who shares an almost identical music taste but a very diffident attitude towards the filing...oh well, can't have everything I guess.

I file my CDs alphabetically by artist, and then chronologically within the artist, so in my big section for Prince I have "For You" as the first CD and "Planet Earth" as the last. As for all of his spin-offs etc. (i.e. "...and the Revolution", "...and the New Power Generation" and so on) I still keep them all under P for Prince because, well, he was the one who mattered in the outfit.

Sister Rosetta? I'd file that one under T. Meat Loaf? That would go under M. The The? Tricky... The hardest ones I had to file were Grant-Lee Phillips and Grant Lee Buffalo: same bloke, but did I put them all under G as in GLB, or the GLB ones under G and the G-LP ones under P? I kept them all together in the end under G.

has the rather annoying habit of sticking all of my hip hop under various artists due to the guest artist malarky where as any sane man would file Outkast under O, no? The Fall have also been dumped in the VA section for some reason...does my pod have a sense of humour per-chance?

From the moment that the CD was invented I decided it was a disposable format that would eventually die off.

So.

Proper vinyl albums / singles get filed alphabetically, with soundtracks and compilations all bunged together.

CDs are haphazardly strewn in vaguely thematic piles. So that pile is mainly metal, this pile is sort of country, even though Shelby Lynne shouldn't really be there anymore. That shelf is the upstairs in Edinburgh Fopp one, so blues, jazz and easy all reside there.

Motorhead, Deep Purple and Atomic Rooster have their own shelf, although that includes solo material and offshots, so look for Captain Beyond on that one.

That bookcase has Allmans, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Gov't Mule, as well as spin offs, which means that Phil Lesh may be found there if its the one with Warren Haynes, but if it's a live CD with Joan Osborne, it will be two shelves over.

Simple. Your thanks for this advice are taken as read.

Referring to the original post, I agree with the filing of the Beatles albums in chronological order (Please Please Me, With The Beatles etc) but where do I put the re-issued Capitol albums? I'm happy with various bootlegs shoe horning their way in to the running order but feel odd putting these colonial releases in with the main body of work.

I've just read that back and realise that I may have a xenophobic filing system. Blimey.

I haven't read all these posts. It'd take an hour. I don't have a spare hour. The subject is an important one, though, so I am replying to the initial post by Fraser Lewry (hi Fraser!).
First of all, you're making unneccessary problems for yourself: Sister Rosetta should go under 'T'. It's a no-brainer. Equally, Dr. John goes under 'D', natch.
Spare a thought, though, for my predicament; I, who, many years ago, started filing by genre, then artist, then obviously chronological ("Please Please Me" left of "With The" etc.). Now, I have nearly 2000 CDs. Not a collection of Peelian proportions, I know, but it does take up half the wallspace of my study, the other half being devoted to books. Not to mention the rump of my last vinyl collection, all that remains after selling, losing or otherwise donating several entire collections between 1970 and 1990 when I converted to CD.
The genre problem is incredibly complex. How dumb was it to initially create "US Rock" and "British Rock" categories, for example? Where does, say, Van Morrison fit into that, or Chrissie Hynde & The Pretenders?
Then there's the jazz/blues/soul/world divide. Boy, are the boundaries blurred there.
And classical music is a nightmare to classify by artist: composer, soloist, conductor or orchestra upfront?
In short, I imagine I am the only living person who could find their way around my music collection.
How liberating it is to have now a terabite of external hard disc onto which I can just rip 'em all and look at 'em in windows in alphabetical order regardless of genre...thus giving rise to interesting juxtapositions: Rolando Villazon followed by Ron Sexsmith? Works for me.

My filing system doesn't really exist any more - I ran out of space to do it properly ages ago, so I keep everything neat, and rely on remembering where everything is. It hasn't let me down so far.

I think the most important thing with a filing system is that it works for *you*. It can be as wilfully inconsistent as you like, just as long as it enables you to find whatever you need at a moment's notice.

Soundtracks beginning with The should be filed under T or not? For example The Big Lebowski.
Came to this late but it seems pretty anal - me i have mainly in alphabetical but in 3 locations much to chagrin of she who must be obeyed.

Who on earth listens to music in alphabetical order. I ditched this OCD method of filing years ago, for a more intuitive method. I file music by genre and also according to what I think sits well together. That way I can play anything that suits my mood without having to hunt for it.

I've never come across so many people desperately in need of a life. "It's the end of the world as we know it" and Word readers are fretting over whether Taj Mahal goes under T or M...

I prefer the anarchy system. Others might deem it laziness, but the main LP cabinet has four levels. The first & second rows are my favourites and I know where to find what I want. Then there's the piles on the floor. Anything there has likely been played recently, retrieved from levels one and two, but not returned home (see laziness), which usually means that I'll happily play it again. Sometimes there are happy accidents when I'm forced to trawl though levels three & four looking for something I really want to listen to and know I have, somewhere, if only I could find it. The thrill of the chase and the "gotcha" of the find is occasionally diluted by the realization that said grail is still crap and consequently consigned to rub spines with the burgeoning denizens of level four. Works for me.

What happens with Japan and Rain, Tree, Crow? I can't put them together, but it's basically the same band...

Oh, and the Mr has ishoos with the way I prefer to file CD singles separately, whereas he believes that they should go in with the albums. I maintain that being often in much narrower cases they can easily get lost.

AND I have some of those absurd tiny CDs...

I need a lie down.

under Z, Mothers of Invention under M, but where would you put Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention?

I file the Jeff Healey Band under "J". It's a band. And Jeff Healey's solo albums under "H". Healey was also a collector with 38,000 albums. I wonder where he filed his own stuff?

Genre filers like to browse, fair enough. I'd say half of my collection is multi-categorical though. "Crossover", as it were. Making it hard to find if filed by genre.

...Singles?

Having worked for HMV for roughly half of the 90s, I bought an awful lot of singles by my favourite artists of that era, as well as acquired a lot of promos, rare stuff etc.

My current method is to file full albums in artist alpha order, then the singles with the relevant artist but after the albums, and in chronological order.

Collaboration singles (e.g. David Bowie and Pet Shop Boys - Hello Spaceboy) go under the first titled artist.

...surnames only (Tharp), ignoring the definite article (Sister, The, Les).