How Do You Organize Your Music?

I've always wrestled with organizing music by genre. Record stores do this, but I often have artists whose work or particular albums cross genres. That's where it gets messy. Is Clapton "rock" or "blues"? Is Dylan "folk" or "rock"? Is Ry Cooder "world" or "blues" or "country"? I suppose one could do that an album-by-album basis, but that could be even more confusing. Even orchestral pieces can sometimes be quandaries. Should Bernstein's "West Side Story" be in "soundtracks" or "classical"? What about the operatic version? How about the London Symphony Orchestra playing Pink Floyd music?

Digital music players like WMP and iTunes certainly make things easier, but one still has to list an album by 'genre'. I've basically concluded that there's no one answer. Do what feels right to you. Even if that's "autobiographical" as Proghead referenced Rob from High Fidelity.

1) Genre.
2) Alphabetically.
3) Chronologically.

Cheers,
John

a friend of mine back in the seventies did it this way, and i still enjoy it.....by the geographic origin of the artist...within that context, its then a through z.

DVD Audio, Sacd Classical, Sacd (the rest), MFSL Gold, DCC Gold, Gold (the rest), Christmas, All remaining music in Alphabetical order--box sets included. I started collecting cds when they first came out, and, for better or worst, have accumulated over 15000 discs. Being a furniture builder, over the years I built large oak drawer units (40” wide, 24 inches deep, and 72 inches high, nine drawers each) to store them in. I also have 500 albums from my earlier days, which I built a cabinet for. My wife puts up with my music collecting, because she collects movies, which I built a 2000 dvd rack for. All of my music is kept in my den.

I have a tough time sometimes because I have a LOT of electronic music and those guys are notorious for having many aliases. I usually lump all of their releases under the most popular alias. For example Richie Hawtin records under his own name, FUSE, Plastikman, From Within(with Pete Namlook), etc. but I file all of his stuff under Plastikman 'cuz that's his most popular act. I'd also put all solo releases from band members under the band --->Edgar Froese goes after all of my Tangerine Dream cds. Occasionally a solo release I have filed with the band gets their own place in the alphabet when they make it big themselves--->Feist gets moved from the end of Broken Social Scene and into the "F's" when she started doing iPod commercials. I'll also file comps with an artist if I primarily have it for the song they contributed. My system wouldn't make sense to most people if they just looked at the spines unless they really knew this type of music.