The Art of Arranging Your Music Collection

We at long last bought new cd storage after two frustrating years of living out of crates, which brought up the age old music geek conundrum - how should I organise my music? In the end I simply transferred my cds as they were already organised, the Traditional Alphabetical by artist, then alphabetical by album title. Simple but effective. Below is a picture of our new shelves which we purchased from http://www.i-cubes.co.uk/ , they are rather gorgeous I think, and I would like a more elegant way of arranging my cds in them.

But what other ways are there?

One of the other most popular, that several people I know use, is by Genre. Punk, Hip Hop, Indie, Soul etc each of which can then be arranged alphabetically by artist and then album title or chronologically. A pretty good system, which makes it easy to find a type of music that fits your mood but which brings its own problems in my opinion. What about sub genres, artists that straddle two genres, or move from one genre to another? This flaw is what has always put me off despite the
appeal of being able to see all my electronica fix in one place.

Then there is Autobiographical or the 'High Fidelity Method', made famous by the book & film. Autobiographical entails arranging your music in the order you got it. I'll let that sink in. For example in High Fidelity, Rob says "If I want to find the song landslide by Fleetwood Mac, I have to remember that I bought it for someone in the fall of 1983 pile but didn't give to them for personal reasons". For most, myself included this would prove impossible, my memory simply isn't good enough for this - I could do it by year from a certain point - when i started keeping a spreadsheet of my albums (yes, I know), but doing this for 80% of my collection simply wouldn't be good enough. If I ever meet anyone who has done this they will be my hero forever.

Lastly there is the most out there system, it's been in my mind to do it at some point, it would look amazing but would be virtually impossible to find anything you wanted. Colour. Yes, by colour, being a graphic designer arranging by cds this way appeals greatly but would make finding what you wanted extremely frustrating. So for now feast your eyes on some who have done exactly this...

Both above pictures from apartmenttherapy.com

So for now it seems I'm stuck with my safe alphabetical system, if you know of, any other ways to arrange a music collection, please do tell me!