I've got my digital collection of albums sorted by year. Current count is 909 albums, from 51 different years. Some years are well represented (2004 - 63 albums, 1997 - 45 albums, 1972 - 24 albums) and others way underrepresented, or are missing completely (1984 - 2 albums, 1981 - 0, 1976 - 4 albums.)

I have a lot of 80's CDs that I've never bothered to digitize... but now I'm tempted to, if only to bulk out some of these years.

Anyone else ever analyze their collections this way?

no

I don't have most of my collection in digital format and I'd stopped updating my excel inventory spreadsheet about 10 years ago. I recently decided that I needed to get a better list for insurance purposes, to prevent myself from buying crap I already own, to help with mix making, and just to keep more organized. I'm using rateyourmusic which enables you to take a slice of your collection by artist, release year, label, and genre. Should be pretty cool to have when I'm done. I think I'm probably about 75-80% updated.

Here's some ideas for filling your holes in 1981, 1984, and 1976

Oddly enough, 1981 and 1984 are relatively underrepresented in my collection as well although that may change a little when I'm done entering stuff.

Digitally, I organize my music as you do.

I don't have any of my digital stuff organized, but I have everything else (vinyl, CDs, cassettes) in OrangeCD.

I don't have a ton in 1981 either, but these look to be pretty relevant:

Black Flag - Damaged
Black Uhuru - Red
Fleshtones - Roman Gods
Gun Club - Fire Of Love
Minutemen - The Punch Line
Mission of Burma - Signals, Calls, and Marches
Oingo Boingo - Only a Lad
Police - Ghost In the Machine
Stiff Little Fingers - Go For It

and 1984:

Nick Cave - From Her To Eternity
Cocteau Twins - Treasure
Hoodoo Gurus - Stoneage Romeos
Husker Du - Zen Arcade
Jason and the Scorchers - Fervor EP
The Long Ryders - Native Sons
Meat Puppets - II
Metallica - Ride the Lightning
Minutemen - Double Nickels on the Dime
Pogues - Red Roses For Me
Prince - Purple Rain
REM - Reckoning
Replacements - Let It Be
Smiths - Hatful of Hollow
Stockholm Monsters - Alma Mater

I've never thought of organizing the data base like this before. Kind of interesting overview. I left off albums before '72, mainly because that's when I came to music consciousness and started actively buying records. But since that time, it seems like I was averaging approximately 50 albums per year, with a fairly hefty uptick around the turn of the millennium when CDR technology made swapping albums easy. Recently, however, even with the preponderance of free downloads, my numbers have settled back down to that 50 average (probably due to the fact that I now only keep what I really like, kind of like when I used to only buy what I really liked).

Year by year totals:

1972 - 37
1973 - 56
1974 - 51
1975 - 49
1976 - 39
1977 - 69
1978 - 88
1979 - 88
1980 - 99
1981 - 65
1982 - 63
1983 - 55
1984 - 53
1985 - 67
1986 - 80
1987 - 57
1988 - 61
1989 - 50
1990 - 55
1991 - 49
1992 - 57
1993 - 68
1994 - 68
1995 - 73
1996 - 92
1997 - 72
1998 - 89
1999 - 72
2000 - 95
2001 - 97
2002 - 118
2003 - 120
2004 - 88
2005 - 100
2006 - 89
2007 - 73
2008 - 56
2009 - 56
2010 - 56

jeeezus

They blasted through this in its entirety the other week. Warner's still got it.

menu -> tools -> sort -> by year

done

I was reacting to the number of albums.

Foobar makes it easy to list your albums by year.

I've got:

1972; 32
1973; 29
1974; 27
1975; 38
1976; 22
1977; 56
1978; 55
1979; 56
1980; 70
1981; 76
1982; 56
1983; 74
1984; 56
1985; 63
1986; 68
1987; 81
1988; 99
1989; 87
1990; 106
1991; 129
1992; 133
1993; 141
1994; 149
1995; 143
1996; 151
1997; 163
1998; 145
1999; 181
2000; 186
2001; 215
2002; 268
2003; 300
2004; 307
2005; 441
2006; 379
2007; 297
2008; 455
2009; 347
2010; 177

I've really lost my motivation to look for new music this year. Too many distractions I guess.

A few years of note:

1983 - Got a Walkman for my birthday (along with Combat Rock and Purple Rain)
1988 - First CD player
1990 - Discovered college radio
1999 - Napster came out

I'm looking at Rym now - the musicmap feature on the profile page is really cool! How much of a pain in the ass is it to enter albums?

It's really quick as long as it's something that exists in their database. Even if it's not there, it's not too hard.

Jesus Christ, Donovan.

Wow Donovan you are insane.

I actually have a two-tiered system for my collection. When I rip a CD or download something (about 90% CD nowadays - I preview stuff online much more) I put it in a temp folder. It only makes the sorted collection if I like it. This way I only get good stuff on shuffle - although there are still shit tracks on good albums that pop up occasionally.

yeah, I don't think I've heard more than 50 albums this year...let alone bought 177, although I take it since you mentioned napster this includes downloads.

I like that they have singles and compilations entered - I've always had a tough time cataloging those. I guess the only reason I'd use a site like this would be for insurance purposes though. Lately I've just been taking digital pics of the CD shelves. Do you actually need to itemize the artist/titles for an insurance claim?

how do you do this?

Not sure about Foobar, but FYI I use Winamp, and created a new "smart view" to sort them by year.

Open up the Album List (it's in the library menu) and choose "View by year".

What can I say, I'm a musical hoarder. I don't get rid of anything unless it's really awful.

Also, those figures include reissues, and I don't delete the original release, so I do have some "doubles".

no wonder i couldn't find anything in there. i didn't have my library indexed.

and this only underscores that i need to clean up my library as it says i have

1 from 1987-1995
891 from 2008
and
2 from 2935

cool, shiv has two albums from the future


what does music sound like in 2935?

almost everything I own is on cd or vinyl and not on the computer so there's no way I'm going through all of them to do this but its probably like this:

2000's>1980's>1990's>1970's>1960's>1950's