What's the best way to catalog my physical music collection using Mac OS X?

August 10, 2004 4:32 PM

What's the best way to catalog my physical music collection using Mac OS X?

I downloaded the demo of MyMusic Personal Librarian and it seems pretty good, but I am looking for some second opinions or some suitable alternatives before I purchase it.

posted by boost ventilator to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

Best answer: If you can, wait for Delicious Monster to come out.
posted by nathan_teske at 4:55 PM on August 10, 2004

Here's my solution, but it was a little expensive: I bought three 400 CD changers, loaded up all my CDs, and connected them to my Mac. I bought a hardware adapter and software package from TitleTrack that looked up all my CDs on CDDB and gave me instant access to them from my Mac.

It works great, but I am now planning to move everything to a RAID in Apple Lossless Audio format. I move a lot, and I don't want to have to move all the CD players and CDs and whatnot.
posted by subgenius at 5:43 PM on August 10, 2004

Subgenius: You have way too much free time, but that's just super cool. ;)
posted by nathan_teske at 7:10 PM on August 10, 2004

There's Library -- although the description and the icon make it seem like it is only for books, it has a full feature set for managing CDs and DVDs, too.

You can buy one of those cheapo cuecat barcode scanners on eBay to use with it and it will grab info from Amazon, etc.
posted by bcwinters at 7:27 PM on August 10, 2004

bcwinters - Delicious Library is the next version of Library.
posted by nathan_teske at 7:54 PM on August 10, 2004

Grab a Z39.50 client and pull MARC records for your CDs from the Library of Congress and other open Z39.50 servers and import them into Koha or Emilda or a similar open-source ILS, with maybe a crosswalk to Dublin Core so you can also import them into the Scout Portal Toolkit which'll give you a bit more flexibility in terms of creating ontologies and the like.

Oh, you meant remotely practical solutions? LibDB looks promising but seems currently to be largely vaporware.
posted by IshmaelGraves at 10:40 PM on August 10, 2004

Wait for Delicious Library
posted by terrapin at 6:27 AM on August 11, 2004

I built a custom FileMaker database. Maybe it's overkill, but it works well for me. I wanted the ability to indicate whether something's a promo or a test pressing and to list composer separately from artist for classical recordings. Also, sorting by label was important. And the ability to add new formats (10" vinyl, 3" CD, etc.). I don't know if Delicious Library will have any of the above features. It seems more focused on actually lending items out (due dates?!).
posted by hyperizer at 10:01 AM on August 11, 2004

Rip all of the CDs into iTunes, put them in a box, put the box in a closet. Make a playlist called "Songs I Legitimately Own on Physical CDs" and add all the songs to that playlist.
posted by kindall at 10:42 AM on August 11, 2004

A conductor field is also a must....
posted by hyperizer at 4:49 PM on August 11, 2004