Media Storage

(Of course, my problem is that I bought 5 of these things, and I need more of them. And I'm out of room. Damn it all.)

Now I've moved to pine crates, which are sturdier, still modular, and can be stacked much higher. I found a distributor that had a size of pine crate that held two CDs side by side almost perfectly, about 66 across, total of 132 per crate. I can get seven of them stacked between the floor and the ceiling, though I had to affix the top crate to the wall with those Ikea straps, to make sure the whole thing doesn't tumble down onto my head when I reach for something in the row 3rd or 4th from the top. Oh, and they're also much less deep, barely deeper than the CD itself, which leaves a lot more space in the room for living.

Following up on the success of the pine crates, I also discovered another size that almost perfectly fits my vinyl, and now have two lovely crates of vinyl tucked away under the bottom shelf containing my books and stereo. Yay!

Storage per shelf = 80 CDs; per side = 320; per unit = 640. We have two, so there's space for close to 1300. Cost, excluding paint, around 180 quid.

They may well be discontinued (and require a bit of modification anyway). In which, Billy might well do the job.

I have seen this for myself and can confirm the scariness.

My CD collection (around 500) is now in a managable (and carriable) box, and you can look through your kind-of mini-vinyl collection with ease by looking at the spines because they all orient to the top. Plus you get free drinks from your mates when you give them your now useless cases.

The only disadvantage is that I've now lost my colour-gradient CD look, and had to move to an anal alphabetical system but I can live with that for the sake of a lot more space and no broken back the next time I move.

I tried doing this a few years ago through Bags Unlimited, but the inlay cards got bent and scuffed and when I moved some of the CDs broke because the bags were too flimsy to provide adequate protection. It turned out to be a big hassle. I wouldn't recommend doing this.

lol.

But the thing is I also leave my CDs all over the place in big piles on the floor out of their cases (well, plastic bags) and they all stay OK. What exactly are you using them for???

JBR count me as another vote for Ikea's "Billy" shelving. You can get extra shelves for them since not much vertical clearance is needed from one shelf to the next. A full row of discs is light weight and doesn't sag at all. The only possible downside is that the shelves are a little deeper than you need for CDs, but I like this -- you can push the discs to the back of the shelf and use the space in front for the cases of "now playing" discs, or discs you haven't put away yet.

Or maybe have a look at http://www.batteryguys.com/cd_storage.htm (I have no first-hand experience with this company or the products they carry.)

you give me Acid Mothers Temple in Miami

Not the prettiest but certainly the most cost effective.

i am considering either ripping to HD (and backing up), or investing in some of these

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/41G77D7Z5PL._AA280_.jpg

either way means throwing away jewel cases. i want to know if i will regret that. last clear out i had i threw away all the slipcases and special edition paraphernalia and i didn't really care.

so, what Sam Hunt said. anybody do this and regret throwing away jewel cases. also should i not bother ripping to HD, keep the CDs in those wallet things instead?

I keep all my backed-up cds and dvds in those big black cases, not had any problems or regrets about giving away all my bought cds. I've got a bunch of films stored on cd-rs from years ago and I'm about to start putting them all on my pc and burning them onto dvd. Bit worried that some of the cd-rs won't work anymore - how long do burnt cds and dvds last for? Are there any ways of storing them safely so they last longer?

Only comment I have is that if you were to try to sell them sometime in the future not having the cases would reduce the price you'd get for them considerably, and if you don't keep inlays/booklets it makes them more or less worthless.

i need to find cd books that actually fit the booklets and the CDs. and ones that fit promos with cardboard sleeves. most of them just fit the cd itself.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/njsouthall/Headphones%20and%20hi-fi/IMG_6619.jpg

My girlfriend and I are in the process of selling-off all our duplicate CDs as we're moving in together. That was hard enough, never mind getting rid of them completely for CDRs or an external HD.

"i need to find cd books that actually fit the booklets and the CDs"

yeah that would be good - recommendations anyone?

Ripping them all and then selling them, while perhaps morally dubious, is something that I don't regret at all.

Toby's a wise man. I'm keeping an eye on TB hard drives and...waiting.

(i've been figuring on a CD ripped at 256kbps AAC being around 75MB, so 1000CDs is 75GB, which will do me - if i ripped singles too. must try 'apple lossless' some time)

I'm keeping an eye on TB hard drives and...waiting.

I'm paranoid about backing up everything I've already ripped - I sure as hell don't want to do that again! I have everything on 3 different drives - my 100Gb Archos player, music external music drive (300Gb) and a backup drive that mirrors the music drive and my main system drive (500Gb). The only thing I don't have is a proper off-site backup.

My girlfriend and I are in the process of selling-off all our duplicate CDs as we're moving in together.

Respectfully, Nick, you're playing with fire there. I had a joint comic collection with a long-time girlfriend. Needless to say, it was mostly lost in the 'divorce'. And friends of mine who got married never merged their CD collections or purged duplicates - and it's a good thing as they got divorced.

Hey Ned, there is a place online (and they have retail stores) that has a special until 11 July for 500gig bare drives ($89/no rebate!) which is a great deal. They are also selling external 500gig drives for $119. Obviously, if you have a large collection, my advice is to make sure you buy an extra to use as backup. In other words, a 1TB driveset is going to cost you $250 and to back that up you need to double the pleasure. How the hell did $500 disappear so rapidly? I really don't see 1TB drives going below $200 until next year.

Also, for those of you who are thinking of ripping and then selling the physical CDs...the market is falling because LOTS of people are doing this very thing. My guess is that a lot of people who bother to buy new CDs just rip them, put them on the iPod, and then turn around and sell them.

oops, it's

frys.com

Ah, good ol' Frys. Anyway, thanks for the tip -- I'm in no immediate rush to rip and sell yet (though obv. the used CD market's getting ridiculously flooded -- still, there's always Amoeba), so I'm content to wait for further price reductions on the drives. Basically I just want to make sure that whenever I move next time both the book and CD collections are fairly miniscule in comparison to the past.

"I had a joint comic collection with a long-time girlfriend."

GET OUT!

GET OUT!

That's exactly what I did, and then took a couple of years off of comics, then rebuilt most of what I had lost.

But I didn't share my music with her!

must try 'apple lossless' some time

i'm pretty sure flac will be supported in leopard, won't it? so that's probably a better bet. i ripped mine to a mixture of V0 mp3 and flac, depending on how much i cared about them.

I want to "do a toby" also.

Ha, I started this topic.

After moving into a much smaller apartment, I've eschewed shelves forever. I actually picked up a couple of these. Took a while, but I put just the cd and the front cover in the little plastic sleeves it came with. I rarely pull anything out, unless it is to rip it to my computer.

People fought and died so that we could talk about this subject.

OK - I need a practical shelving unit to store 5000+ CDs in jewel cases. I know, I know.

What the hell do radio stations use?

At this point, a) money (or at least up to two thousand bucks - cheaper than indefinite storage) is no object, b) I'm using a big 19x19 room entirely for CDs and LPs so space is not a concern, and c) I don't need this thing to be pretty, and the CDs don't need to be displayed (drawers are fine).

There's gotta be SOMETHING, right??

Our station's got a room with walls lined with shelves, a lot of which have columns of CDs stacked on top of each other flat, which is annoying. It's also extremely cramped. In all honesty, have you considered just DIY? It can't be that difficult to build shelving, you'll have infinite control/flexibility to create exactly what you need, and it'll be far cheaper than any other solution.

Yeah, build your own!

That's where I'm heading, I think. I'm not too handy but my wife is.

The highest capacity I found online is about 2172 and those things are fugly and I'll need at least two, and that's with getting rid of a bunch of stuff.

Right now I have 32 plastic milk crates stacked eight high in four huge columns in a closet, each stacked two CDs high - roughly 180 CDs per crate. No rhyme or reason to the cataloguing whatsoever - totally random.

I find myself downloading stuff I own just because it's easier and quicker than trying to find something. Isn't that preposterous?

I just bought the Expedia shelves for LP storage, eight of those neat plastic 7" boxes from Bags Unlimited, and I'm fine with keeping my hundreds of tapes in crates, stored away for now. But this CD thing is throwing me. I WILL NOT resort to Case Logic. Going bananas!

I find myself downloading stuff I own just because it's easier and quicker than trying to find something. Isn't that preposterous?

are you j/k? I've only got around 350 and I find myself doing this.

Hahahaa. And it's terrible when friends are all "Do you have such and such" and I'm like "yeah! it's great" and they're like "cool! Can I borrow it?" and I'm like "erm...uh..." picturing the three hour ordeal of heavy lifting it will inevitably take to procure the CD in question.

This collection, of course, is the result of the following:

1) Spending money exclusively on music from the ages of 11 till about 23, and about half exclusively from that point on

2) working a radio station for four years getting free shit

3) working at a label for five years getting free shit

4) writing music reviews for a living and getting free shit

5) obsessively burning to disc and inserting into a jewel case everything I download off Soulseek, for fear of a hard drive crash

And the thing is...I sell shit CONSTANTLY!!

How the fuck does this happen?

Oi! I'm only 20 and want to have one of these Really Great Collections that everyone talks about so much. Don't view this as a bad thing. You know that organizing it is going to be, like, the most fun you will have in a long, long time. Organizing my CDs is my favorite part of cleaning my room/moving/etc; I always rediscover.

if you DYI, know what you're getting into! it will ultimately be less expensive, but think about all of the time, frustration, etc... use to do minor carpentry projects with a friend during college. aside from the getting/cutting/transporting/painting wood nightmare, if you're doing shelving and you want it to be over 6', you should anchor it to the wall. that involves finding the studs, etc. and building the shelves to the wall's specification. IKEA (especially) designs their products to be transportable and lightweight and disassembled without too much trouble. unless you're a real bad-ass, your finished product will probably be a lot heavier, more unwieldy, and a major pain if you ever move out of your house.

But don't let me stop you. Also, i lived in NYC and didn't have a car, so I might associate carpentry with wooden planks on the subway nightmares, etc.

use to do minor carpentry projects

ahem, I used to do minor carpentry projects

Seems like you need numbers 7 and 1 in this list; http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/staff_top_10/top-ten-music-geek-accessories.htm

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/njsouthall/IMG_7011.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/njsouthall/IMG_7004.jpg

But surely a properly alphabetised 'B' wouldn't contain um Beverley Knight (K) or um Bruce Cockburn(C). Brendan Benson's safe, mind.

Aye, that's annoying, especially given that I've worked in a library for five years.

Hey there, that's definitely an iffy subject. I know, at least for me, I have my CDs released by a single person alphabetized by first name, and LP's by last (I forget why I did this but it made/makes sense). I personally prefer by first name; just makes it easier for me.

I alphabetise by surname, always. Almost. Madonna is by first name. Obviously.

Another touchy subject--what to do with numbers? Many like to do digits (12Rods, 808 State) under how they'd be spelt (treated as 'Twelve' and 'Eight') respectively, where as I prefer to put them all in 0-9 order before 'A'. However, what to do with artists that spell out the digits? Or even worse, switch between digit/word on different releases?

biffy clyro?

a biffy subject

xpost - And then what about where it's a name but it's not really the name, like PJ Harvey (P surely?) or erm, Dave Clark Five - terrible example I'd think probably D, C could work but not really, F would be preposterous. Biffy Clyro is a better example.

Numbers I just put where it would be if they were spelt.

Biffy Clyro's a band, so B. PJ Harvey is a.. solo artist('s band), so H.

Hmph.

that suck uk thing's a bit off then. bobbie gentry? bobby darin? bill cosby? and etc.

And the thing is...I sell shit CONSTANTLY!!
How the fuck does this happen?

You're not selling enough. I have a similar-sized collection and do an annual purge but the amount I sell doesn't except the amount I buy, hence an ever-expanding collection. And I have one room for CDs and I'm determined not to exceed that capacity. Each year I get more dispassionate about what I sell - if it's not likely to be pulled out more than every few years, b'bye. But I've also been ripping and selling which makes the decision easier. And as Ned has said about his own experience doing this, you know how often I queue up stuff I ripped and sold? Exactly never.

Let's face it - once you've got thousands of CDs, there's going to be a bottom 5% that you'll never pull out except to decide whether or not you want to sell it. So sell it!

...doesn't EXCEED the amount I buy...

I especially eschew the idea of keeping something just to remind yourself or someone else how bad it is. ("This Killing Joke album, Outside The Gate, is awful - listen!")

I use shelving I got long ago from a great source in North Carolina. They went under and I had to get a new type of shelving which is good in that it stores a lot but doesn't match my other shelving. Bother.

Re; numbers; I put them in with the letter that spells the digit, hence 65daysofstatic are under S.

!!! go at the start, before A. Which is convenient cos it stops the alphabetical divider falling down, too.

PJ Harvey is a.. solo artist('s band), so H.

This is tough, because I've read that PJ Harvey is the band, while Polly Jean Harvey is the singer.

I just built some shelves to mimic the Ikea dealie:

http://www.eichlernetwork.com/images/Spotlite/storage_i.jpg

'cept mine only has 9 squares (3 x 3). I made it out of Birch plywood, ripped oak pieces for the facing, and stained it a "honey oak" color. It's heavy, but I suspect it will be with me for a good deal longer than the Ikea unit would last.

This is tough, because I've read that PJ Harvey is the band, while Polly Jean Harvey is the singer.

Yeah, that's what I thought. I don't actually own any, so it's a moot point. I'm now chuckling at the idea of someone (like me, for instance) spending a long time constructing, and subsequently defending their own alphabetising (or otherwise) system, reading this thread and thinking "oh, maybe I should've done it like that after all".

Possibly worse, mine are just in the same order as they are in the Excel spreadsheet, which means there's "The"s missing and solo artists get their names reversed and so on.

You use an excel spreadsheet? I personally prefer Recordnerd.com

I'm seriously considering switching to something like this:

http://www.mmdesign.com/multimedia-storage-cabinets.htm#chest

...getting rid of all my jewels cases, and putting all the CDRs and legit CDs in the same spot.

the drawbacks are that it's expensive, it'd be a bitch to unpack every CD i've got, and i'd have to get a ton of those sleeve thingies along with it. and i'm worried i'd miss the jewel cases at some point!

but i'm really tempted, for space reasons. has anyone done something like this? recommendations?

http://www.lacie.com/imgstore/product_medium/hd_d2.jpg

yeah, my cd's are basically backed up digitally and then stored in boxes. the shelves above are for vinyl.

hmm i'm not really feeling the digital option, if only cos i don't want to rip every single one and i'm a little afeared of head crashes and the like. but, maybe.

i now have 2 of those CD wallets i posted up thread. they are pretty good. could do with a leetle more space for booklets - there is some space at the front for the large mini-books (like with the pet shop boys repackages) but it's tight.

so that's ~550 CDs in the wallets, about 250 albums and 100 singles dumped on oxfam, leaving only ~150 jewel cases in the house. sorted.

I lost a 200GB hard drive last summer - I know I should've made back-ups - but I'm reluctant to go down that road again.

I started an Excel sheet about 10 years ago when I didn't have the internet and I just kept adding to it - my librarian-instincts kept telling me to create some sort of database but I never got round to it. I lost the original sheet in the afore-mentioned hard-drive crash, but I was bored last week so I just sat down and added them all to a new one, I might do something more interesting with the data later. I'd never actually heard of recordnerd.com, mind. USP - I can finally stalk people who've bought my 7".

Numbers I just put where it would be if they were spelt.

What about foreign names? Years ago when I could last be bothered to alphabetise I had my 22 Pistepirkko carefully under K for the Finnish for 22, Die Goldenen Zitronen under G, and agonised a little over Les Savy Fav.

Of course as long as you remember it doesn't actually matter. I think I just wanted visitors to look through my collection and say, "hey, you have such astounding CDs and organisational skills that I must sleep with you right now, but why is this under K?" and I would get to look clever irredeemably wanky. That should have happened all the time, right?

I use shelving I got long ago from a great source in North Carolina. They went under and I had to get a new type of shelving which is good in that it stores a lot but doesn't match my other shelving.

This is the story of all my music shelving purchases.

Current sitch: abt 5-600 CDs, maybe 1-150 DVDs, and a couple hundred records. I WILL NOT get to of jewel cases and I don't want to spend more than $100; should I just pick up an Ikea Billy and some addt'l shelves? Also there will be quite a bit of dead space behinds the CDs/DVDs; anyone have suggestions re: spacers? Also also the records will stick out maybe an inch out of the bookshelf: is this bad for long-term storage?

Why so adamant about getting rid of jewel cases? I'm on the verge of doing just that, probably next year.

ikea expedit

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/images/products/expedit-shelving-unit__0092707_PE229406_S4.JPG

it holds approximately 70-80 lps per square if i remember right. inadvertently the best LP shelves on the market. for what you have you may want a 4x4 as opposed to the 2x4, esp if you figure on expanding your vinyl collection and considering your cds and dvds.

Are there any inserts to break up the squares so I don't have to stack CDs? I've thought about the Expedit but the lack of adjustable shelves turns me off.

Xp also I meant I will not get RID of jewel cases, for a variety of reasons, but mostly bcz I take my CDs places a lot (cars, work, parties, etc) and don't want to transfer them to a wallet. Also, I have

OMG! Come on man, don't do that to your readers, what do you have? :-)

Oh no I forgot!

I was prob going to say something abt Digipaks

possibly helpful

http://littlecornerhouse.blogspot.com/2011/11/ikea-hack-expedit-for-closet.html

Funny how my media storage needs have changed in the last 10 years since starting this thread. Now I just use spotify.

That is p Great! But I'm afraid that at $150 for the 4x4 and $20 per insert the cost will add up fast; the Billy's only $50

> Are there any inserts to break up the (ikea expedit) squares so I don't have to stack CDs? I've thought about the Expedit but the lack of adjustable shelves turns me off.

yep, all sort of them - one that breaks them into quarters when inserted, one for two stacked drawers, colored or mirror doors, all sorts of wicker baskets, and others. I've bought four Expedit shelves (some 1x5 rather than 2x4) - they're v. sturdy, and fully finished front and back, top and bottom. So if the top surface gets scratched over time, you turn the whole thing upside down and now it looks the same as before but with a pristine surface on the shelves and top.
http://www.ikea.com/PIAimages/0116848_PE272371_S2.JPGhttp://www.ikea.com/PIAimages/72866_PE189117_S2.jpghttp://www.ikea.com/PIAimages/0111961_PE263151_S2.JPGhttp://www.ikea.com/PIAimages/65407_PE176604_S2.jpg

Billy better for CDs and DVDs though - shallower, somewhat adjustable shelves, has a back surface, less expensive. For a vinyl collection, Expedit's size and strength are perfect.

You buy 5-6 of those wacky doodads though and you've quickly doubled the cost of your shelves. I love my Expedit shelves, though!
I've cut up little pieces of cardboard to stick between rows of CDs on tall shelves, allowing me to stack multiple rows of normally-oriented CDs on one row of shelving. Looks grody but it works.

Ya it's a mostly cd and DVD collection and the records are almost an afterthought.

place a row of cds at the front of yr shelves, then screw a piece of wood horizontally between the shelves behind and flush w/the top of that row of cds, then put yr 2nd row of cds on top of the wood and boom yr cds are arrayed in a pleasing stair style layout and the structural wood is concealed, thats what i did once long ago when i had cds

You buy 5-6 of those wacky doodads though and you've quickly doubled the cost of your shelves. I love my Expedit shelves, though!

Yeah i'm convinced that's how Ikea makes money - sell cheap furniture and then charge alot for accessories. Kind of like how McDonalds loses money on hamburgers but makes it back selling a cup of Coca-Cola at 4x their cost.