Music Cataloging Software

[roger payne]

Does anyone have advice on good classical music cataloging software?

[The Mad Hatter]

To do what exactly? I just use OpenOffice (the free equivalent of Microsoft Office, if you haven't heard of it).

[Bunny]

I use Collectorz Music Collector.  It's not perfect, but it's the software that I found most convenient and easiest to input a large collection from scratch.  You can get a barcode reader which will list the cds and then do an internet search to identify them and even download pictures of the covers.  You can also scan the cds from the drive on your computer and search that way as well as a search by artist(s) and title of the cds, or manually add something.  It's also easy to add a picture of the cover either from a scanned file on the computer or by searching from other websites for a better picture (drag and drop from any web page).  The biggest limitation of the software is that it uses Amazon for information about the cd and free db for track information. Track times can only be input manually or by scanning the cd.  After saying all that, it's got great flexibility for listing composers, conductors, orchestras, musicians (soloists), engineering/production credits, release date, recording date, tour date, adding liner notes, back cover pictures, and personal data such as when it was purchased, store where purchased, price paid, location, whether a cd is in the collection or "desired," rarity of cd, and "value" for resale.  It's close to being a store inventory system so it's got a lot of features I would never even bother with.  What I really like is that the genres can all be customized and added -- I've got romantic, early romantic, classical, baroque, 20th century, renaissance, etc.  I then use the genre file view so that everything gets arranged by period and then aphabetically in the folder by composer.  It makes it very easy to find just about anything; a lot easier than locating the actual recording.  The program will also assign a number to the cd in case I want to put them away numerically, but numbers are assigned according to the order they are input into the system. 

It's not perfect, but for my purposes it really was the easiest software to use.  I did trials of other softwares that weren't as flexible and more difficult to input.  One supposedly great program expected me to list all the composers before I even put in a single cd.  Nothing was automated for data input.  I might as well have used any data base program, and that was the only one that used gracenote.  A note: although it sounds efficient to scan the cds, that's actually a lot slower than scanning barcodes.  Barcode scanning is the fastest way of inputting a cd.  The program is also assembling a data base of cds from the various collectors using it so I have found that some rare oop cds that aren't listed at Amazon have their information listed in the Collectorz db, which is extremely helpful.  You can also include as much track information as you wish or no track information, list mp3 files and vinyl records (searched by artist and title) automatically as well.  Very convenient and easy for software idiots like me.

[mahlertitan]

MediaMonkey

[SonicMan46]

To do what exactly? I just use OpenOffice (the free equivalent of Microsoft Office, if you haven't heard of it).

Agree - depends in part of 'how much' you want to track - I've been using Microsoft Access for years (not an easy program to learn, and know just the basic features; templates can be downloaded or designed afresh to do about anything you want) - my approach is pretty simple - below is a pic of what a part of the first 'report' page looks like - I also have the program tabulate both the number of 'units' I own & the total number of discs (printed out on the last page):