There have been recent, and quite interesting, threads on how people categorize their Prince collection in iTunes (or whatever media player they use), and/or their iPod. I recently went back and changed all Purple Rain through Parade era stuff to "Prince and the Revolution". I went through all Diamonds and Pearls through stuff and labeled it "Prince & The New Power Generation". I also changed the three NPG albums to show "New Power Generation" as the artist.

But the question here is: Do you list the named stuff as such? My ALBUM is listed with the O ( + > ascii text (no spaces). But do any of you list albums like anything from The Gold Experience through Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic as the symbol monkier?

I know there are exceptions in there like COME, The Black Album, The Vault, Girl 6, and 1999: the New Master, but with the other stuff...do you just list it as Prince, or as the symbol monkier?

It's an interesting call because those albums would then be under the letter O, since the symbol typing starts with an O.

Or do you just keep EVERYTHING under "Prince"?

I keep it all as "Prince". Just easier and it's usually just me going through the library. Really when it all comes down to it, it is all the same, it's just the period in which stuff was done by what name and I feel is taken care of by the year, otherwise it's just politically purple. This is just digital organization, my physical CD collection I do separate the NPG CDs and Madhouse as it is by name. The Symbol stuff is grouped really just in chronological with the "Prince" stuff as it just works out that way anyhow.

Great Question however, I've always wondered how peeps catalog this stuff as well.

blueautumn said:

Yep I do it the same way!

I label it all as just "Prince". It would be annoying (to me) to have it any other way, especially on an iPod.

Even the way some of the NPG stuff is labeled would drive me nuts. Some use "And", some use "&". Some use N.P.G., some spell it out.

Dear Mr. Sewell,

I understand and empathize with your dilemma.

Adding to the confusion is that on the CD's themselves say different things, like "Prince AND The Revolution" versus "Prince & The Revolution" and "Prince And The N.P.G." versus "Prince & The New Power Generation".

Ultimately, I let freedb guide me, but I decided to standardize on "Prince And The Revolution" and "Prince & The New Power Generation". Don't ask me why, it just felt like the right thing to do!

I left the stuff as Prince. And I called the album the "Love Symbol Album", like Amazon does!

Some other albums made me think about some things, like Exodus. I put it in my Prince pile even though it's only credited to "NPG". Prince is on, like, every track, so I consider it a "Prince" album!

I use Foobar 2000 as my media player, and nothing really matters -- I can find any tune in less than a second anyways! That's the way to relieve yourself of some of the categorization anxiety that accompanies the archival process!

It's hard to be perfectly accurate with all this stuff, but the important thing is that everything is organized in a way that you can easily recall it.

Peace and Prince Grease,
Toadlips

Se7en said:

I did check and with the Revolution it was "and", whereas with the NPG on D&P it was "&".

ernestsewell said:

How many said "New Power Generation" and how many said "NPG" (count the singles too).

I label it all as Prince. That way, I can put it on random by Artist and have everything available.

No, it isn't correct, technically. But this is one case where I prefer function over form.

I think there might have been some iTunes updates which have solved all the
problems that used to bug me about the way my iPod lists albums.

I can now have them all listed in chronological order, with correct artist and
album titles without any problems! So when I scroll through cover flow, the albums
appear in the right order. So Purple Rain appears after 1999. And The Gold
Experience appears after Come and the black album, despite the albums being
credited to "Prince", "Prince and the Revolution" or "". Even Graffiti Bridge
now appears in the correct place and is not classed as a 'collecion' despite
having different artists credited for the various tracks.

It appears all the "sorting" sub-fields are now working correctly.

So I've just made sure that the "sort artist" and "sort album artist" fields
both say "Prince" on all his albums, and the "sort album" field contains the
year of release instead of the actual album title. Where there was more than one
album released is the same year, I've just added a ".2" to the end of the year
for the album I want to appear second.

So even though The Gold Experience is listed as "" on my iPod, it still
appears in amongst the P's rather than the O's.
[Edited 2/21/10 15:57pm]

ernestsewell said:

I just file everything under Prince.

BorisFishpaw said:

That sort field is probably a good idea, and should be relatively easy to select all and put in "Prince" in how to sort. Good idea.
It'll let me be geeky and enter for the symbol named years.

Se7en said:

Anything from Goldnigga, Exodus, or NewPowerSoul is under "New Power Generation", including the singles I have as well.

As far as my boots (live stuff)....I still need to tweak a few things.

When I imported my CDs they popped up with an artist name attached.

Gold Experience, Emancipation Disc 1 & Disc 3 all showed up as The Artist Formerly Known As Prince.

Chaos & Disorder & Emancipation Disc 2 both showed up as Prince.

Weird about the Emancipation credits.

Prince

Prince and the Revolution (including 1999 )

Prince and the New Power Generation (all NPG including Exodus)

And I go so far as to list all side projects as

Prince--The Family (1985)

Prince--Jill Jones (1987)

Prince--The Time (1981)

HonestMan13 said:

Yeah, mine came up the same way.

BorisFishpaw said:

Outstanding idea... never thought to use the "Sort Album" field in that fashion. Thx for sharing that.