How do you store and catalog your vinyl?

After I looked over Discogs closely I decided it just was not worth the effort to create something of my own.

One of my primary goals was to have at hand information on present collection.
This way when in my LRS or thrift stores I can instantly check if i already own my proposed purchases!

The Discogs app works perfectly on my phone for that function.

Just have to complete it all....
Then my cassettes....
Then my CDs......
Then my R2R......

I "only" have about 670 LPs, but that's a huge leap from a couple years ago when I had just a few.   Storing and organizing has become a pressing problem.


I decided to use the discogs app to catalogue my collection. 



It's been a slog over the past few weeks doing this that's for sure!  But having finally finished last week I'm glad I did it.  Now I won't double-buy any more LPs (yup, done that!) and I know what all those shelves of LPs actually contain.


And now it's not egregious work to input any new LP via the app.  Most of them I buy from discogs, so it's just a matter of pressing a button "add to collection" when I receive it.    Otherwise, if it's new vinyl from somewhere else I can scan the bar code.


BTW, I've found these record dividers to be great.   They are stiff, look good, easy to write on with a white grease pencil, and I prefer the wedge-cut as it seems to take up less visual space:


https://www.amazon.com/30-Record-Divider-Cards-12NS13BK30DI/dp/B00BF7ESQY



But I face the problem of most music collectors:  How to organize, with the bedeviling issue of sub-categories.


For instance a lot of my collection is Library/Production music from the 70's/80's.  And I love synth-electronic music.



So when I have a synth-based Library album there are three possibly helpful categories I could put it in:


1. Library Music2. Electronica3. Old Synth Electronica (analog etc, a favorite genre).



In terms of physical storage, that presents a problem of which category in which to place it.


It SHOULDN'T present a problem with a good organizing app, because you'd THINK that such apps would allow you to organize via sub-categories, so I could put such albums in all three categories.  Unfortunately....and this blows my mind for an app made by the premier site for record collectors...there IS no option for sub-categories in the discogs site/app!    Talk about an annoying head-scratcher!


I've looked at other vinyl organizing apps, but unfortunately they are more cumbersome to use than the discogs app, and don't allow near the speed of inputting my collection.


So, until discogs wakes up and makes the app utility better, I'm still struggling through these issues.

Kinda cool cataloguing my collection although time consuming.

Get to learn exactly what I have as I go along and even been able to submit Three new versions that were not in the database.

Even though the monetary value is not that important , that is also amusing when I look at the value range.

Vinyl complete.
CD that I still have on shelves complete although that is maybe 10% of total I own, rest were ripped a while ago and got boxed up and placed in the outer garage loft storage area.
Suppose at some stage I will have to drag them down and catalog all of them as well. Oh joy!
Working through cassettes right now.

I have no idea how many records I have. They are all over the place but I can always find what I want. Not sure how. All the CDs are on a hard drive and cataloged in iTunes. I'd rather look at the vinyl. 

The most egregious job I ever had related to this hobby was ripping all my CDs so I could stream them and put the physical copies away.

It was such a time-consuming, mind-numbing chore that I gave up part way through, had a local "cd-ripping company" rip the last few hundred.Of course they did a crap job, getting tons of tags wrong, so I had to redo a lot there and finish off ripping more CDs.

Very glad that's behind me, and I very rarely buy CDs anymore.