Discogs Collection option

[porcy62]

I started to sell on Discogs some time ago. Since lately I have lots of free time, unfortunately, I started to use the "collection" option to organize my stuff. Any experience on it?

Edited April 9, 2019 by porcy62

[Д.Д.]

Whenever I am on Discogs I mark a few my CDs as "in Collection", and by now have a sizable part of my collection input. I have not really played with the settings, but it is not bad. The items are sorted by First Name, rather than Last name, which is not how I would prefer it, and customization options are limited, so I would not use it as a primary database (for this I use Collectorz: https://www.collectorz.com/music ), but it is OK for what it is, and I guess Discogs will develop it further.    

[porcy62]

Yeah, the First Name issue is pretty common in most parts on the web.

[king ubu]

Coincidentally, I had a discussion with a musician selling his CDs after a gig -- "hm, do I have this already?" ... he mentioned he's been starting to manage his collection via discogs, so over the weekend I started checking it out ... I find it somewhat annoying, with many superfluous (sometimes duplicate) entries and stuff - not that it really matter to myself if I have the version or without barcode (I will not go and check, my CDs are in no easily accessible order, so if I go through a label or musician entry and mark the ones I own, I will not have them at hand). Oftentimes, promo copies are listed separately, which I find silly -- but I guess for all those that are receiving them and then illegally selling them on, those entries do make sense (and as a customer I'd not want a simple cardboard case promo copy if the regular edition has a proper booklet).

With vinyl, I'm often at a loss to even determine which edition I have, with labels such as Prestige or Verve that kept repressing their albums.

I have my excel list and copy it onto my smartphone every now and then, but accessing and reading a mutli-tab excel list on a smartphone isn't exactly handy.

[porcy62]

Certainly it's not a true archival grade system. So far I loaded only my cds and I had some problems to identify some records, expecially the most widely repressed, so I picked up the one as close as possible, I tried to add my editions, but gave up after a couple of tries, I mean what is the purpose of a new edition of U2's Pop cd that is pratically identical to another one a part that is "pressed in Holland" instead of "EU", medium value 1,67 euros? What I realized until now is that I payed big bucks for those damn small pieces of plastic and most of them are valueless. Fortunately things reversed with the vinyl box set of Mosaic. I am going to load single LPs in the future.

Edited April 10, 2019 by porcy62

[Dan Gould]

Man I desperately need to use something like this. I have discovered in the past two months I have purchased three titles on discogs that I already owned - a Pablo Basie, a Cleanhead Muse, and most embarrassingly, I purchased the Jay McShann duo recording on Sackville twice in two months.  The Cleanhead was something in the stacks, and the Pablo was purchased about a year ago.  Basically for the McShann and Basie, $5 purchases became $10 total costs because of my foolishness.

[porcy62]

Some years ago I bought a Joe Henderson BN mono pressing I already own, but I sold it now and I had my profit, I can't say the same for other dupes. I used some lists I made, but I often forgot to update them.

Edited April 10, 2019 by porcy62

[JSngry]

23 hours ago, porcy62 said:

Yeah, the First Name issue is pretty common in most parts on the web.

Not jsut on the web, anywhere digital where you can't sort by last name. You end up having to concatenate shit all the time, it's a pain in the ass.

[porcy62]

Yeah, when the machines will take control they will erase human beings starting with the guys named Aaron.

Edited April 10, 2019 by porcy62

[mikeweil]

It's because they are pop music based, where group names dominate. 

I typed all of my LPs and CDs into doscogs, jusr to know a possible value of my collection. In classical music, they are not as complete, as far as CD releases are concerned. I typed in all my classical LPs, the CDs are still waiting.

All the issues above are due to the users evaluating issues as separate or a variation of an existing issue. 

Steven Albin designed Beyond Category for this purpose.

[porcy62]

The issue of value have sense IMO, expecially for my heirs, I don't want some jackals stole from them what I built with passion, research and money. I don't type the conditions of records I leave it to my nephews, as far as possible.

[king ubu]

15 hours ago, JSngry said:

Not jsut on the web, anywhere digital where you can't sort by last name. You end up having to concatenate shit all the time, it's a pain in the ass.

I think I only learnt that beastly word I because of said shit happening ...

[sidewinder]

56 minutes ago, porcy62 said:

The issue of value have sense IMO, expecially for my heirs, I don't want some jackals stole from them what I built with passion, research and money.

My worst nightmare - would rather install some anti-scumbag jackal tamper detonators in them. 

[porcy62]

Rest assured that if your heirs known the exact value of the collection, jackals will be left high and dry.

[Big Beat Steve]

13 hours ago, mikeweil said:

It's because they are pop music based, where group names dominate. 

I typed all of my LPs and CDs into doscogs, jusr to know a possible value of my collection. In classical music, they are not as complete, as far as CD releases are concerned. I typed in all my classical LPs, the CDs are still waiting.

All the issues above are due to the users evaluating issues as separate or a variation of an existing issue. 

Steven Albin designed Beyond Category for this purpose.

If Discogs (which I haven't tried in this respect yet) won't let listings be organized alphabetically by last name I wonder if anybody has ever managed to combine the organization features that Discogs offers with a DIY cross-reference list organized by last name to make it easier to retrieve every individual artist (not group) in one's collection?

Features like this are a can of worms where I guess you have to take some individual action when it comes to what you yourself want to organize in a retrievable manner.
Would you yourself file Muddy Waters, for example, under "M" or under "W"? And I even know printed Rock guides differ on whether to list Fats Domino (for example) under "F" or "D".

I also remember a scathing review long ago of a somewhat awkwardly set up "Rock guide" book where they made fun of an entry listed as "The Stones, Rolling". Anything can happen ..

 

Edited April 11, 2019 by Big Beat Steve

[king ubu]

 

Here's the beginning of my current list, sorted by artist - no clue why "Bennet*" is before Agusti, so yeah, sorting options are definitely not ideal. You can sort (in both directions) by all the blue keywords in the title area -- a/z on first click, z/a on second ... but empty values (i.e. items never sold or without year) will be on top if you have the bottom/up sorting in place.

There is an option to add custom fields, but I just tried adding a "sorting name" field -- you cannot use that for filtering (it's displayed in black type). You can use it, I guess, when you request an export (comeas a csv, so that's alright) ... but I'm not trying that, and of course you'd have to edit that field manually and type in names ...

EDIT: Just triggered an export ... the csv is okay, but it's not Volapük compatible (i.e. Frédéric, as in Chopin, reads Frédéric). Can ben handled, but that's all part of the drag.

 

[king ubu]

There's a bar on the left side (as when you browse artist/label/etc. listings) that can be used to narrow down what's displayed -- but you have to rely on data being good there (I guess "Genres" is of rather little use for instance, and obviously, as it's all release-centred, the "Decades" - as well as the "Year" in the header of the main part of the list) apply to release years.

[felser]

One of my retirement goals (a few years out yet) is to catalogue my collection in excel, where I can list the artist however I think best, can add columns for genre and sub-genre, etc. I played a little bit with the discogs collection feature a few weeks ago, found it just didn't meet my needs.  I will probably write out instructions for my heirs on how to optimally liquidate my collection when I'm gone.  My daughter says she wants to keep it, but I don't really see that happening.  

[jcam_44]

I’ve been using collectorz for a long time. It’s worth the price. 

[Pim]

1 hour ago, jcam_44 said:

I’ve been using collectorz for a long time. It’s worth the price. 

Me too, and indeed it's worth the price. I also keep my Discogs up to date.

[porcy62]

1 hour ago, jcam_44 said:

I’ve been using collectorz for a long time. It’s worth the price. 

Too bad they don't have a one month free option, just to try if it would fit my needs.

[jcam_44]

20 minutes ago, porcy62 said:

Too bad they don't have a one month free option, just to try if it would fit my needs.

If your looking to sell your collection then collectorz isn’t really the organizer for you unless you want it to catalog your sales. There are details to add that information. 

[porcy62]

14 minutes ago, jcam_44 said:

If your looking to sell your collection then collectorz isn’t really the organizer for you unless you want it to catalog your sales. There are details to add that information. 

Not selling my collection, I just wondering if it would be easier to file different pressings and editions, on discogs I just look for the right entry, but often there are dupes or the infos are redundant and useless, moreover it doesn't have many options for filing and searching, the first name/last name for example.

[jcam_44]

49 minutes ago, porcy62 said:

Not selling my collection, I just wondering if it would be easier to file different pressings and editions, on discogs I just look for the right entry, but often there are dupes or the infos are redundant and useless, moreover it doesn't have many options for filing and searching, the first name/last name for example.

Collectorz pulls the basic info from discogs usually. By that I mean label, year, song title ans length of available. I add artists, instruments, where it was recorded and media type. How much I paid and where I bought it too. It’s easy since once you add a detail it will auto pop next time you start typing it, which saves time. I also usually change the artwork to a higher resolution. The app doesn’t have as much detailed info but I do everything on my desktop and sync it with my app every couple of months. 

Edited April 11, 2019 by jcam_44

[porcy62]

Thanks! Seems it has more personal flexibility, all the informations you add are readily available for search and file, correct?

Edited April 11, 2019 by porcy62