Rate Your Music or MusicThing

My loyal readers will remember I mentioned Library Thing a while ago for online cataloguing of our book collection.

I asked several times on their forums and such if they were planning anything similar for music which I referred to as "Music Thing". It appears that they are working hard on new functions for Library Thing and, although Music Thing is a thought in the back of a few developers' minds, they do not have time to work on such a product. However someone on the forum recommend I check out Rate Your Music.

On first glance I figured that he had not understood what I was looking for: online management of my CD collection. It looked as though this was just a site for everyone to put up their ratings (up to 5 stars) and personal reviews of music (CDs, vinyl, tapes, ...). Although that looked like fun, and a vital part of Library Thing, it was not what I was looking for.

Luckily the account creation was free and I gave it a try. I quickly found out that you can "also" include your own music and declare that you "own" the music and in what form it is owned. This is even better than I had hoped for. I can actually note which CDs I have as CDs, which vinyls and, most importantly, which music I have "only" as MP3 files. This allows me to have all of my music collection in one piece of software and online... and it's free!

Windows Media Player, or iTunes, allow me to catalogue and manage my MP3 files. But they do not include music which I have not put in to the computer. Some other software such as Music Collection Pro allow me to manage my CDs, vinyls and tapes and such but not my MP3 files. This is the first program I have found which nicely manages both in one place.

The functions similar to Library Thing such as tags and "compatability lists" are a lot of fun. I found someone else out there who has almost exactly the same jazz CDs I have. The statistics part is really fun as well.

I have entered about 150 of my CDs at the moment and will continue to do so as time permits. That's probably about one tenth of my total collection. I hope to finish cataloguing everything sometime before I die... then everyone else can have fun looking at what's I "had" and start fighting over who gets what!

I've added a link to my music collection in the Links section in the menu over there on the right.