Cataloguing a CD collection

[another generation]

I'm not a saddo geek, but trying to help out a local firm of funeral directors who want to get their CD collection in order. Anyone know of any good ways to catalogue the collection, so that a particular track can easily be found? I would have thought that an iTunes account would be the simplest method, but I don't know if they can have a business iTunes account. How about a spreadsheet? Would it work? I'm working on the assumption that they have basic Office software like Word and Excel, but maybe not a database programme.

I don't mind having to input loads of data, as I'm at a loose end, but I'd be grateful for a starter template!

 

[Second Skin]

If you have MS Access, I think they have pre-defined template that you can use for this.

 

[Blue&whitestripes]

I'm not a saddo geek, but trying to help out a local firm of funeral directors who want to get their CD collection in order. Anyone know of any good ways to catalogue the collection, so that a particular track can easily be found? I would have thought that an iTunes account would be the simplest method, but I don't know if they can have a business iTunes account. How about a spreadsheet? Would it work? I'm working on the assumption that they have basic Office software like Word and Excel, but maybe not a database programme.

I don't mind having to input loads of data, as I'm at a loose end, but I'd be grateful for a starter template!

I think the business could set up an iTunes account as long as they have an email address they can use for it and a credit card. Far as I recall, you HAVE to have a credit card registered.

If they don't have Access, Excel should be capable of doing a basic job as long as they don't have too many CDs and are reasonably familiar with filtering and sorting. Just needs to give some thought to what info they need apart from the obvious - Title of CD, name of artist(s), title of track - details such as whether it's instrumental or vocal, how long it lasts, etc. There's plenty of open source database software out there is you really want to get stuck in :) <a class="postlink" href="https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=open+source+database+software" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q= ... e+software</a>

If they've got no more than100 CDs, you could use this software which would be free to use: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.collectorz.com/music/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.collectorz.com/music/</a> It's not expensive to buy, nor is this <a class="postlink" href="http://www.firetongue.com/cd-database.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.firetongue.com/cd-database.html</a> but the latter only has a time-limited free trial available.

I couldn't find any templates, but it might be worth looking at some of the sw which is available for ideas as to what data would be useful to put in the catalogue.

Good luck :)

 

[Carver]

Have they ripped all the tunes onto a pc? If so you should be able to find an excel vba that searches your disk for music files and imports the data into excel. That's what I did with mine but I've deleted it and don't know what the one I used is called.

 

[Centurions]

Since this was started back in June I'm not certain if he's still looking, however if they're ripped via iTunes then you can create a playlist of everything (via Ctrl=A) and then export the playlist as a text file. This is Tab delimited if pasting into a spreadsheet and just needs certain columns deleting.

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

Have they ripped all the tunes onto a pc? If so you should be able to find an excel vba that searches your disk for music files and imports the data into excel. That's what I did with mine but I've deleted it and don't know what the one I used is called.

If they're on a pc already then something like Winamp, Music Bee or Media Monkey would catalogue them all and allow the library to be fully searchable.