I know I've said it before but I do love my squeezebox! I've been using them for a few years and would heartly recommend them. The Slimdevices Squeezebox was best for me. It plays all formats (I go with FLAC plus MP3 for the ipod). I now have three in the house all in different rooms. You can syncronise them so they all play the same thing or they can all play different things.

As well as your digital files you can use to BBC Listen Again, Slacker, Pandora, Rhapsody Direct, MP3tunes, Last.fm AudioScrobbler, podcasts. You can use almost all audio files or streams.

The server is free and open source, a big community has grown up who produce plug-ins and extras. You can download the server for free and test it out.

All you need is a wifi network or LAN plus you need to keep your server PC on when you want to listen.

It all has to be alphabetical by group or last name. Any OSTs are alphabetical by title; and compilations in 'V for Various', then in alphabetical order by record label - see 'Guinness Book of Hit Albums'. Classical by composer, unless it is Kennedy, Nigel etc., then it would be 'K' for Kennedy. There are problems though, as noted by John Peel about where Howlin' Wolf should go. In my collection he obviously goes under 'H'; Memphis Minnie & Memphis Slim are under 'M', although Blind Willie McTell is under 'M'. Easy as...well, ABC actually.

I agree PT. Ordering alphabetically is the only way to go. However my tip would be to always have a 'monthly listenings shelf'. Ideally this should be the shelf nearest your cd player. This patch, free from any lexical stronghold, should contain all the CDs you plan on listening to in that month; be it recently bought (DIG LAZARUS DIG!!!), recently given (David T's JAZZ TO DANCE TO Mix) or recently borrowed (Sandy Denny's SANDY). It is your own personal music waiting room and also acts as a first line of defense against stealing other peoples music.

If you remember to file items away regularly you can kiss goodbye to teetering piles forever.

It may have been a post on this site, or on another blog, but someone said her CDs were arranged so that the ones she thought would be "friends" with eachother were adjacent. I think that's wonderful.

I got my daughter to colour code all the cds, so they were in blocks, red first, blue etc.
Looks lovely, can't find a fucking thing.

rock/pop CDs are alphabetical, but not absolutely strictly. Barrett/Waters/Gilmour are under P next to the Floyd CDs, for instance.

My jazz CDs, however, are sorted by label - Impulse, Blue Note, ECM etc. Not sure why, it just seems to make more sense.

I love this thread - it really couldn't appear anywhere but the Word blog!!

I'm on the strictly alphabetical, with Jazz and Classical separately. More problematic is the 'DJ Mix' section - perhaps not one many Word readers may share...anyway, I go for the Club or label originating or the DJ, reader it's a total mess...so Kruder and Dorfmeister are under K but Coldcut appear under Journeys By DJ and the Chemical Brothers have Mix albums in this section and 'artist' albums in the main alphabetical. Wonder I can find anything. And as the main storage unit is in the top of the house and the cd at the bottom there is a holding bay of new CD's and current to listen at the bottom.
And despite 20 yrs of co-habitation, 2 kids, joint everything the record collections of me and the Mrs are still totally separate. There is a sort of tacit understanding that she'll get the new Arctic Monkeys, I'll get the new Pet Shop Boys etc. Anyone else home to 2 collections defiantly un-merge? Or maybe more?

I have a vague Classical/Not separation but gave up years ago trying to separate jazz, country, soul and so on. As Niks said, what the hell do you do with Prince - under Soul? Funk? Pop? Electronica? And should the first four Dylan albums be under Folk and the rest under Rock?

Alphabetical is the only way to go, I think. Out of a habit acquired when I was a young'un at the Cough Cough Cough Shop, I arrange under surname if there is one (even if it's a false one, so Alice Cooper is under "C" and Jethro Tull - if I had any - would be under under "T"). Single names - Bjork, Prince, Donovan and Co. - go under that name, even if I happen to know their surname. Otherwise, it's the first letter of the first word, unless it's "The" (even if the first word is an article or pronoun, so This Mortal Coil and A Certain Ratio are under "T" and "A").

Solo or pseudonym projects (AKA "the Rogers-Gilmour Dilemma") go with the main section if the original group is still a going concern. If not, it's the other way round (so Taste, for example, is under "G" - in the Rory Gallagher section).

Works for me, anyway. Now. . . where the hell did I put that Dr. John album?

I used to have my CDs arranged in order of how much I liked them. So, my most-played-and-loved discs were right at instant-grab height, with less accessible shelves hosting less loved discs.

I had well over 500 cds back then, and could find anything I wanted instantly...

...however when I moved in with my boyfriend, he couldn't find a thing.

Today the entire collection (over 1000) is digitised, with a couple of hundred absolute favourites still on the shelf... in alphabetical order.

I suppose this is not too far away from the idea of putting CD's next to each other on the basis that they might like each other, with a hint of chronology thrown in.

Two racks of shelving each with about 1000 CD's divided roughly between the two on the basis of UK and US. Top left hand corner its The Beatles, then their solo stuff, The Stones, The Who, 1960's stuff generally, leading to Jeff Beck, Faces, Rod Stewart, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Eno, Roxy Music, Bowie etc. As suggested above solo material comes immediately after the parent group. 1970's pop leads to punk to New Wave, leads to 1980's synths to Btitpop and beyond. Bottom shelf reserved for Irish, leaving Van Morrison bottom far right. (I hadn't noticed until now that Van is kept as far away from everyone else as possible - but good point Archie).

The assumption is that everything after 1963 is influenced by the Beatles so they should be the starting point. Little in the UK collection pre-63.

Second rack is US, and as it's pretty much the starting point begin with Hank Williams, Everly Brothers, Elvis, Johnny Cash et al at the top left leading to the Byrds, to CSNY, to Neil Young, Joni, Leonard Cohen (Canadians in a sub-group), The Band, Eagles to alt country, Violent Femmes, Patti Smith, Velvets, and so on. Bob Dylan gets a separate shelf all to himself, and jazz & blues are in the front room. This room also contains the current favourites and new arrivals.

I know where everything else is and no-one else does - which I find comforting. ( I must speak to the therapist about that!)

Inevitably the assumption is that its alphabetical, and guests can be driven insane trying to work out the logic, of which of course there is none.

I'm afraid a traveling lifestyle has forced me to place all my vinyl and CDs into storage in NZ and UK respectively.

Although it's so very convenient to store 100's of GBs of FLAC and mp3 files on five HDs and three ipods (including the deadpod - exclusively for music by, and related to, the Grateful Dead), it really does take a lot of fun away from browsing through the music.

itunes, winamp, whatever you will, I'd much rather have shelves and boxes any day.

I've got over 2500 CDs now, so alphabetical is the only way I can keep things organised so I can find things when I want them. I've got a room full of cabinets - two large ones holding about 750 each, and three smaller ones with about 350 each. They're all full so currently from around U onwards are piled on top of the cabinets until I get round to buying another 750 capacity cabinet. Any new purchases go onto their own pile until I've had a chance to mp3ify them. Every so often I spend an evening resorting and putting all the new purchases into the cabinets.

I have almost my entire music collection mp3d (45000 songs) and stored on a portable hard drive which I keep at work. I have a second drive at home too, not usable there until I get a new computer but acting as my backup in case my work drive fails. It took me a couple of years to rip all my CDs, I'd hate to have to do them all again!

I mostly listen to my music through my computer or iPod. There's a large number of CDs I have never listened to on the actual CD but I still like to have the CDs all neatly arranged on shelves and dusted once in a while. At some point I just know I'm going to be made to box up and move things into the attic to free up the space should my fiancee and I get round to having kids.

I also have everything recorded in a database, from which I can print out an inventory to take with me when out shopping as I have a tendency to buy things I already had.

I don't buy nearly as much as I used to. Having a mortgage and a girlfriend and an upcoming wedding have all led to a tightening of my cd budget. My local Fopp closing down was fairly devestating too as I was left without their wonderful selection of bargains to pick from each week.

Besides, I'm a DVD box set man these days (and I've got those alphabetised too). Where once I would spend my evenings listening to music, now I'm glued to West Wing or Wire episodes.

...by first name. Hence Tom Waits comes under 'T'. The Rolling Stones are under 'R'. The The are filed under 'T'. You can introduce sub categories if you feel confident, some of which themselves are more convenient than others - Ian McNabb and The Icicle Works for instance - however after three solo albums, artists generally gain their own space - Peter Gabriel is under 'P' not 'G', this does not work in reverse, as Maria McKee has still not gathered the Lone Justice output to her beautiful bosom. Hope this clears things up.

(who is Italian) because she calls me 'pignolissimissimo', which means 'very, very fussy or pernickety'. I had to prove that it's not just me that organises his CDs in this way. I am expecting a goodbye note sometime soon...

You cold arrange them all by colour , going from white edged CDs through the spectrum or indeed in eye pleasing combinations, even depicting national flags. Your better half will be pleased, your friends will be amazed and you will acheive a rare sense of fulfillment. Or then again, maybe not.

Well thanks for all the advice chaps, I am now more confused than when I started.

Interesting that so many people suggest alphabetisation. I really don't think that would work with me because I tend to listen to stuff based on a fancy, eg 'I fancy a bit of Jamaican ska', or 'I fancy some depressing country music' etc.

One idea that did occur to me was to order the music according to how laid back or upbeat it is. So Solid Air and Jimmy Smith would be at one end working up to Trout Mask Replica and Bad Brains at the other. Then I can pick something depending on how I'm feeling.

My 'music room' is the loft room of a converted barn - the cds run the length of the room and a second tier on the beam that the builders ran across the room which conveniently is the same width as a cd length. These are in alphabetical order but there is only space up to and including half of the S's.I then have an overspill cabinet that includes S TO Z and box sets. There is not any space in this room for more cd's.I then have the office room which houses my mac and anywhere in region of 50-75 cd's which is stuff waiting to be put onto the ipod - generally purchases from last 6 months or so. To further compound matters I have another shelf in the kitchen that houses probably another 100. Neither the kitchen nor the computer cd's are in alphabetical order and I am not sure about putting them in order as they are only part of the collection. Problem is it is now a bugger to find anything outside of the main storage space. The missus says it has got beyond a joke - I agree with her but for different reasons!!Any suggestions other than hers about dispensing with a job lot would be very welcome,

I'm about to, not for entirely that reason, having 6 tributaries to feed, but the lure of a study (ha!) with wall to wall shelving is a distinct appeal. However, I suspect you may have one or two more than me, by the sound.......