Storage for CD collection

January 10, 2005 1:53 AM

I have lots of cds. I've been keeping them on shelves, but the collection has outgrown my current set of homemade bookshelves. Any ideas for housing >300 disks? [+]

The MI: I'm keen to keep them in their original boxes. I've been thinking about drawers, but am open to other suggestions.

posted by handee to home & garden (31 comments total)

Stacks & Stacks has a number of options.
posted by Smart Dalek at 2:40 AM on January 10, 2005

If you decide to ditch the cases (which I did for over a 1500 CD's) then Caselogic do a great range of folders for keeping CD's in.
posted by mattr at 2:48 AM on January 10, 2005

I'll second the Caselogic route. I recently bought two of their 260 capacity cases. You could coveivably keep the main cases in boxes somewhere, and insert the booklet along with the CD in the Caselogic folder. I do worry that this presents a significant burglary risk, though.
posted by viama at 4:22 AM on January 10, 2005

Drawers are a pain. We used a drawer system for a while and were constantly opening and closing drawers to find what we wanted. We ended up going with Ikea's Billy bookshelves with cd inserts. We already had our books stored in a few Billys, so these are a nice extension. Plus if your cd space requirements are reduced (you take them out of the cases, store them electronically, etc.), you've still got a decent bookshelf.
posted by boomchicka at 4:32 AM on January 10, 2005

I use a wallful of Ikea's Benno CD storage. They're only one CD deep, where Billy is book-depth, and the shelves move so you can fit CDs and DVDs in. They've got clips to connect to the shelves beside it, but full they're even stable standalone.
posted by mendel at 5:15 AM on January 10, 2005

Oh yes, the Benno is nice too. We started out with a couple of Bennos before moving our expanding collection to the Billys. Now we used the Bennos for DVDs.

The Billy cd inserts do bring the shelf to the proper depth for storing CDs, so shelf depth isn't really an issue.
posted by boomchicka at 5:41 AM on January 10, 2005

I'll third or fourth or whatever Case Logic. I've got a bookshelf filled with those 200-disc cases.

One tip: don't scrimp and get cheaper replacements -- the interior backing for the CD's on the Case Logics are made of a really good scratch-resistant material. Not so for the cheaper versions -- get a stray piece of sand in there and when you take out your CD... sccraaaatcch.

Also, my personal favorite style for the plastic sleeves has a middle notch that runs almost all the way up the middle. This allows you to remove the CD by sticking your finger in the whole and pushing up. If you get the kind without the middle notch (the regular kind) it's a bit more difficult to remove the CD's without touching anything, particularly if there's another CD on the other side. These are the standard compromise -- the notch goes all the way down to the hole. I personally don't like these as much only because the side parts of the 'V' end up getting natty after a while.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 6:11 AM on January 10, 2005

I've got somewhere between 400 and 500 discs. I've been through every possible permutation of storage options in the last couple of years, I'm pretty sure. My main requirement is keeping inserts and liners near each other, because I often read the liner notes to an album I'm listening to. My second requirement is having something I can browse through when I want to listen to something, but I'm not sure what. About 50% of the time when I turn to my CD collection, I want a specifc disc. The other 50% of the time, I just want something.

First, I had custom CD racks of various types. Nice and convenient when you've got 50 discs, terrible pain in the ass when you have a Tree Farm worth of them fighting for floor space.

Next I tried bookcases. Like you, I ran out of space on my shelves. But I live in a small place, and getting more shelves didn't seem like a great option. Plus, I found that I never much listened to whatever was on the bottom shelf because it was just too hard to see.

After that, I took everything out of the cases and moved to Caselogic cases (if you go this route, be careful to remove all of the inserts, including the trayliners if you ever want to be able to sell your discs). I found with discs in these cases, I simply never listened to anything at all. They were far too heavy to pick up and browse through. Now, if I'd chosen 10 100 disc cases instead of 4 250 disc cases (I was using 2 slots per disc, one for inserts, one for the disc), I might have been more likely to pick them up and look through them. Plus, trying to keep them in alphabetical order when I bought new ones in a case that didn't allow for new pages to be inserted was a horrible pain in the ass - even though I deliberately left every 7th CD spot blank the first time through. The final problem with cases is digipacks. Take your inserts out of a jewel case and put them in the binder, no problem. But what do you do with digipacks? I ended up masking taping mine into the binders, which made them hard to close.

My current soluction is drawers. I have two plastic drawers in a larger unit devoted to CDs and their inserts. They fit two across and about 150 deep. Digipacks fit in. Because I don't have to lift the drawers and carry them around (but I can, since the drawer itself is light weight), I look through them more frequently. The main drawback is that it's hard to flip through them to find exactly what you're looking for, because the flimsy inserts don't provide great separation. I will probably add some index labels to the drawers in the near future so that at least when I'm looking for Neko Case, I have some idea where C starts.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:18 AM on January 10, 2005

The most space-saving thing I ever did was to Caselogic all of my CDs; however, I've still had problems with scratching, and I don't even take them out very often. Luckily I've imported most CDs into iTunes (probably the most efficient way to house music is put it on your computer).

If you'd like to save the original packaging, though, I'd say get used to no wall space.... even shelves were overwhelming to me.
posted by ibeji at 6:22 AM on January 10, 2005

I've wondered whether binder-style cases actually reduce the burglary risk, as it seems like some burglars wouldn't know what they were looking at, and CDs without cases aren't nearly as easy, or profitable, to sell.

That said, I use Boltz racks for my CD collection. (Full disclosure: the company is owned by a friend-of-an-acquaintance. I paid full price for my racks.) They're very sturdy, and expandable, qualities that I've often found lacking in other CD shelving.

And one last bit of randomness: depending on how much you envision your collection growing, perhaps you should consider getting a 'megachanger,' like one of Sony's 300- or 400-disc models.
posted by box at 6:27 AM on January 10, 2005

Also, depending on the cash you're willing to spend on solving this problem, I'd heartily recommend a multi-drive file server. 250 Gig drives are out now -- four of them (two for data, two for RAID data redundancy) will run you $520. The nice thing about this solution is that data transfer is FAST, data access is EASY, and you can group, sort and search to your heart's content.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 6:33 AM on January 10, 2005 [1 favorite]

Oh, and they'd hold about 700 CD's.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 6:33 AM on January 10, 2005

i suggest spindles. i have tried caselogic, drawers, and shelves.

at first, i was using them for data archival. i would write the subject (pr0n, backups, mp3s, etc) on the spindle cover and store the discs therein. these stack/store/move really easily and take up less space than any other method i've seen.

haivng ~1k audio cd's, i got damn tired of being a student (moving a lot) and trying to keep them in order. i switched over to spindles for audio discs. this may not be feasible if you want to have the liners/track-listings in close proximity to the disc. i don't; doesn't bother me. you can order/sort them any way you like. i don't; doesn't bother me :)

also, the center console of my car (and my last one) perfectly fits a 50-disc spindle which is really nice for keeping 50 discs safely stored and out of sight. caselogic doesn't tuck away so nicely.
posted by mdpc98 at 6:43 AM on January 10, 2005

If you're looking for drawers, Can-Am has some good high-volume solutions. Thats what I plan to do to get my ~1400 CDs somewhere other than in boxes and piled on my desks. Ugh.
posted by softlord at 6:44 AM on January 10, 2005

oh yeah...

my apt was burglarized just before thxgiving and none of the spindles were taken--though all the computers and cd players were removed :(
posted by mdpc98 at 6:47 AM on January 10, 2005

I paid $12 at Target for a system that held 350 CDs slightly angled for easier viewing.
posted by mischief at 6:56 AM on January 10, 2005

If you can, I'd second (third? fourth?) storing them digitally somehow, and then packing the actual discs away somewhere if you want to keep them. I recently upgraded my computer, and I've been using iTunes (which I love). I don't even really use my stereo anymore, as my computer speakers are fine in my eyes.

As for storing the actual discs, I don't know about you, but I don't like the way CDs look when they're out. It looks to messy, too cluttery, etc. Right now, I have them all in crate-sized boxes from IKEA, and since I never actually use the CDs anymore (since I listen from my computer), it's worked out fine. If you want to have easy access though, I'd also recommend the Billy bookcases from IKEA with the CD inserts. A friend of mine did this, and it allows them to be out, but they don't look too cluttered.
posted by AlisonM at 7:15 AM on January 10, 2005

I saw a cabinet once in Holland which held the disks vertically, about 2mm apart from each other. You would slide a notch along the case, and then push on it, and the cd would roll forward, or something like that. Me' memory is a bit fuzzy.

There were cheap plastic versions for sale in a local electronics store, and the CD store used a nicer metal model. It was probably one of the slicker CD storage methods I've ever seen. Wallpaper Magazine kinda item. Never saw one again. Anyone familiar with it?
posted by Jack Karaoke at 7:21 AM on January 10, 2005

For 300 disks, it's still feasible to keep the discs in jewelboxes on shelves. But furniture is probably the most expensive storage option, on a per-CD basis, once you get above some threshold.

I've ripped my whole collection (about 600 CDs) and stuck all the discs (and booklets) in binders, which I rarely open. Mostly I listen to the music from my computer, but sooner or later, I do want to distribute that signal to the stereo in my living room. With a large collection, even buying a spare hard drive for music and some kind of hookup to the stereo may come out ahead of buying furniture. The cost of furniture increases more or less linearly with the number of CDs. Hard drives are big enough that you can store a good-sized collection losslessly for a flat investment: allowing about 300 MB for each disc using losslessly compressed storage (such as ALE in iTunes), you can get 650 discs on 200-GB hard drive.
posted by adamrice at 7:59 AM on January 10, 2005

If you want to go sleeves and retain the tray card, these are an idea. I use their "classic" system (sleeve holds only the booklet and 2 CDs) and I'm quite pleased. I have around 1k CDs, but buy 3-4 CDs a month, so I need to keep them organized without the hassle of shifting around in a binder. Sleeving the CDs and putting them in trays makes it much easier for me to browse and reorganize.
posted by Sangre Azul at 8:42 AM on January 10, 2005

Whatever system you decide to go with, buy twice as much as you think you need. Put the excess, still in a box, in a closet somewhere. Because in a couple years, when you outgrow the initial batch of storage, sure as shootin' the manufacturer will have discontinued the model you bought originally, so it'll either be throw everything out and start over, or else settle for the new storage only sorta kinda matching the original.

As for me, i ditched the jewel cases, put the discs in sleeves, and put the sleeves in CD boxes. I have about 900. And of course I need a new CD box and I can't find one that matches the ones I already have.
posted by kindall at 8:50 AM on January 10, 2005

Damn you Sangre Azul! I think you just made me start looking at yet another way of storing my CDs. That looks excellent.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:52 AM on January 10, 2005

I have ~1500 CDs. My solution is based on those free-standing media storage racks that have dowels running horizontally (3 per row) to hold the cases tilted up slightly at an angle. I built a couple of large versions based on that design:

• 2'9" wide x 5'7" high
• 1x6 pine vertical on either side
• 1x4 pine (drilled through) in the middle
• top piece
• diagonal cross brace in back

Each one holds 700+ discs in cases. That will last you for a while (tho it didn't last me all that long as I have now overflowed shelf #2!)

IMO, the Case Logic solution is great for burned discs that don't have associated artwork. I use that for the Mp3 CDR archives...

I also like IKEA's Kassett boxes for storing misc stuff in my office area (aka the "digital dining room").
posted by omnidrew at 8:54 AM on January 10, 2005

When my collection grew to more than 1,200 cd's, I invested in three Sony 400 disk megachanger jukeboxes, a little interface box called a S-linke, and some software for a nearby PC called CDJ. The S-linke and CDJ control the players, and now I finally listen to all of my music!

Somewhere, I have a box with all of the liner booklets, but I never open it.
posted by Futurehouse at 9:00 AM on January 10, 2005

I'll third the Ikea Benno suggestion. I had around 200 CDs, and inherited another 400 or so. So far, four towers hold the almost 600 discs, with a little room to spare. For about $50 each (at least here in NY), they're inexpensive, and pretty good looking. My ludditude prevents me from putting music on a server - but I'm still jealous of the convenience!
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 9:44 AM on January 10, 2005

I solved my growing CD space problem once and for all: burn them all to super high-quality MP3s, and either toss them in the closet as a backup (legal) or sell/give them away (making your MP3 versions illegal.)

I can't wait to do the same thing to my 200+ DVDs, but am waiting for a Killer App drive storage system/menu system to play them all back.

Someday I hope to be able to do the same thing legally for all my video games (downloading Half-Life 2 directly from Steam is a good start).

It's all just bits these days. Physical media are cumbersome and obsolete.
posted by robbie01 at 10:22 AM on January 10, 2005

Also, depending on the cash you're willing to spend on solving this problem, I'd heartily recommend a multi-drive file server. 250 Gig drives are out now -- four of them (two for data, two for RAID data redundancy) will run you $520. The nice thing about this solution is that data transfer is FAST, data access is EASY, and you can group, sort and search to your heart's content.

I too would go (and have gone) this route, but in my opinion the above setup would be overkill. Me, I store my music at alt-preset extreme -b 192 with EAC/LAME. I realize it's lossy, but I can't imagine any circumstance in which better quality is necessary or even perceivable. That said, I average about 230 kbps compression. At that rate you could get just two 250 GB drives and setup a RAID 1 array for redundancy. By my calculations, that buys you room for about 2,400 hours of music, which will probably be enough room for roughly 3,000 CDs. So smaller drives would even be doable for a collection your size.

But bottom line, even with lossless compression (ie FLAC) you'd get about 50% compression which would still get you enough room for like 1,000 CDs / 250 GB. I'm pretty sure my numbers are about right, but someone correct me if I'm off.

And god does this save space, and make playing music so much more enjoyable and convenient. Of course you'd also need to appropriate stereo setup / media center to make it perfect...
posted by drpynchon at 10:34 AM on January 10, 2005

but am waiting for a Killer App drive storage system/menu system to play them all back.

Are you serious? Have you really not heard of this yet?

even with lossless compression (ie FLAC) you'd get about 50% compression which would still get you enough room for like 1,000 CDs / 250 GB

I was definately erring on the side of caution with my numbers. Most CD's don't go past an hour, so that's about 650 MB each. If you're storing digitally, there's no reason not to use lossless formats. But yeah, encode in FLAC as you say, and you've got 1,500 CD's on a two drive system (though you should RAID them for data security). That's unpossible to beat.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 11:12 AM on January 10, 2005

I binned about 300 cds in favour of Flac and it's backed up to 3 locations, with the derived mp3s and vorbis being in 5. I kept some of the liner notes but mostly I can look that stuff up online if I want (someones always scanned it in), and the source Flacs have metadata saying the album, track number, etc, release year, etc. Much more info than the cds.

If I had the space I'd like to keep them but I'm living like a student these days.

It's been over a year now and I haven't looked at the liner notes I keep in the folder. I don't really miss CDs, they're a crappy technology (scratched, you'll only have 20 out at once). I tend to search on the web for any information I want. Computers are much better at searching and organising the music.

I use Foobar2000 at work, my ipod when out, and Geexbox at home.

Occasionally I'll want to lend someone a cd but that only happens every few months, so I just write them onto cdrs. That's one downside.
posted by holloway at 4:04 PM on January 10, 2005

I found these really stylish cabinets at Storables, although not online. I found the sleeves are fine for holding both the CD and insert, rather than one CD on each side. The tops of the sleeves hold the spine of the jewel case, which in almost all cases, is perforated. This makes for a real slick way to browse your collection. It was time-consuming to rip open all the jewel cases and pull the spines, but in the end, it is an exquisite storage solution. People ooh and ahh at the way the drawers slide open at the push of a button.

The two caveats: the drawers can hold more sleeves than they give you, and the sleeves can't be purchased separately. Secondly, the time it took to pull the spines, inserts and CDs from the jewel cases was probably almost as intensive as burning the music to digital archive, in the baby-sitting way.

It's time we stopped purchasing landfill-ing products where digital alternatives exist!
posted by ValveAnnex at 7:01 PM on January 10, 2005

When my collection grew to more than 1,200 cd's, I invested in three Sony 400 disk megachanger jukeboxes, a little interface box called a S-linke, and some software for a nearby PC called CDJ. The S-linke and CDJ control the players, and now I finally listen to all of my music!

I have the exact same setup -- except I use Mac software -- and it's pretty cool.

Now, however, I'm in the midst of converting everything to Apple Lossless format. It's an imperfect solution (rip CDs at work using EAC and convert to ALE; copy to iPod; carry iPod home and copy to Powerbook with 720gb external storage) but I'm considering a dedicated media server (Mac Mini? Shuttle?) with RAID 5 storage. (I copy the CDs at work because I'm there 10-12 hours a day, and I'm more confident in EAC than I am in iTunes, but the latter may be ill-founded.)

The CDs are I've copied currently . . . uhh . . . sitting on my turntables in "spindle-sized" stacks, waiting to be returned to the megachangers or otherwise stored.
posted by subgenius at 8:01 PM on January 22, 2005