How to organize a CD collection

Pick an order

• Alphabetical by artist, then by year: the classic, easy for anyone to follow. It needs gaps, or every new CD shifts a whole row.
• By genre, then alphabetical: good for big collections and mixed tastes, as long as you decide once where the borderline albums go.
• In the order you bought them: a diary on a shelf, nice to browse, hard to search without a list.
• Box sets, singles and compilations often work better on their own shelf, sorted the same way.

There is more on this trade-off in why alphabetical stops working.

Store them so they last

• Upright, like books, with the spine out. Stacks crack the cases at the bottom.
• Away from direct sun and heat, which fade booklets and warp cases.
• Shelves that match the case size. A standard jewel case is about 12.5 cm tall and 14 cm deep, so deep shelves leave room behind for a second row, which you will never look at again. One row is better.

Keep a list, and a map

Almost every CD has a barcode on the back, which makes CDs the easiest format to catalog. In Shelfify, open Find Record/Song, tap the scan icon next to the search field and hold the camera over the barcode. Shelfify looks the release up on Discogs, and if the CD is not in your collection yet, you can add it right there. Barcode scanning is part of Shelfify Pro, which you can try free for 30 days. If your collection is already on Discogs, connect it instead and it comes in with its folders.

Then draw your shelves in Shelfify, from IKEA Kallax templates or your own sizes in centimeters, and put each CD in its compartment. Search by artist, album or even a song title, and Shelfify shows the room, the shelf and the position from the left. The random pick can filter by format, for the evenings you want a CD and not a record.