Music Collection to Excel Database

I had the same problem ended up creating a spreadsheet in Apple numbers on my Mac which is in iCloud so I can read on all my devices.

Hopefully somebody might have a quicker easier solution,

I've kept an MS Excel spreadsheet of my record collection for many years. I have two sheets within the workbook, one for classical and the other for everything else. I update it periodically, often when CDs are ripping, and then send it to various places so that I can access it on my phone, iPad etc. and also so that I have it recorded in a number of locations just in case my PC fails.

While you can use Excel or similar... have you looked at bespoke databases such as Collectorz or cdPedia?

Red Kite posted:

I have searched and found a few queries but no solution.

I just want to have a list of all my albums so i dont buy duplicates when out shopping. Its would basically be an alphabetical list of all the folders in the UnityCore but i am at a loss on how to do it. I have tried exporting from my backup drive using mp3tag or TagScanner but just get gobblydygook.

Does anyone have a simple solution or indeed could Naim provide that function ?

Why bother creating an Excel doc when there is a vast, readymade solution out there in the Cloud? One in which thousands of other enthusiasts and collectors have done all the work for you so you don't have to do too much work. It's called Discogs and it's free.

All you do is just trawl through the database, add everything you have (it's very detailed so, you can get really granular with regard to pressings, masterings etc) simply by pressing the "add to collection" button. There's a mobile app so you can check whether you have something when you're out shopping. You can also choose whetherto make your collection public or invisible to everyone but yourself.

I have 5,000-plus albums, plus thousands of singles, CDs and tapes. It works great for me.

If the Naim app maintains a cache of ripped discs (as does the nServe app), then you'll always have an album list in your pocket when shopping.

Kevin-W posted:

Why bother creating an Excel doc when there is a vast, readymade solution out there in the Cloud? One in which thousands of other enthusiasts and collectors have done all the work for you so you don't have to do too much work. It's called Discogs and it's free.

All you do is just trawl through the database, add everything you have (it's very detailed so, you can get really granular with regard to pressings, masterings etc) simply by pressing the "add to collection" button. There's a mobile app so you can check whether you have something when you're out shopping. You can also choose whetherto make your collection public or invisible to everyone but yourself.

I have 5,000-plus albums, plus thousands of singles, CDs and tapes. It works great for me.

I suspect that is exactly what the OP is trying to avoid - if you have so many recordings that you can’t remember them all, then going through and having to look up each one individually in discogs is going to be a significant chore, even if just clicking a button for each when found. (And by definition would have to be done while viewing the library.)

How, or how easy, to do is likely to depend on how the files are stored. If they are in a nested file structure with, for example, tracks in individual album folders having names that are adequate to unambiguously identify the specific album, grouped in, say, artist folders, perhaps in genre folders, then it could simply be a matter of importing the file structure into excel, which I’m sure will be fairly easy using an OS or Excel solution (I just quickly tried Googling “list file structure in excel”, and it comes up with a lot of hits, suggesting there may be a ready capability).

If, on the other hand, your files are stored in a different way, or album folder names are inadequate and you need it to drill down into metadata, then you will be limited to something specialist, either library handling software or metadata editing software, for which, if others can’t help, you may have to search different library or metadata editor features.

If the music folder is accessible via Windows you could use robocopy and export file structure to text file then import to excel

Jan-Erik Nordoen posted:

If the Naim app maintains a cache of ripped discs (as does the nServe app), then you'll always have an album list in your pocket when shopping.

Jan, how do you find cached info. in N-Serve? I’ve only been able to view albums when it’s connected to the server. 

If you're using Windows you could try running a PowerShell command:

Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Directory -Path directoryPath

i.e. where directoryPath could be a mapped drive or UNC path

May not be the prettiest output but it does the job.

You can use MediaMonkey to create reports to Excel

Alternatively, if you google 'Excel tools to capture folder structure', you'll get lots of answers. This link looks like it might have some free solutions: https://www.raymond.cc/blog/pr...-to-text-or-printer/

I have no link to this person or organisation. Nor can I vouch for how well any of the suggested solutions work.

Trickydickie's solution might also be a good one. MediaMonkey is free (or used to be), and it could be setup to scan your music collection.

OK thanks, i have my solution using Powershell, i had never heard of it till this morning so a steep learning curve !

Monkey Media like the others produces garbage. I think this is because Naim uses metadata in a different way. I will post my method later.

Red Kite posted:

I will post my method later.

 

Please do, as I would be interested to see this. Can you make it as idiot-proof as possible, for bears like me with small brains...?

A List of my Naim Music

The presentation is a bit untidy and there must be a better way to get it in a spreadsheet. However the info is there and that’s what I needed when I’m in a charity shop, thinking have I got that one ?

Find your UnitiCore on your PC, or connect your Backup portable drive to view in windows explorer.

Navigate to the location of the MQ folder. Click to the right of the location address to make it go blue

Now just type in powershell.  This will open it ….

Then type tree   and this is what you get.

To copy the list you need to put your mouse in the title bar and right click for edit/copy.

Then paste to a word or txt document.

Nearly complete success. For some reason the first few bands are excluded from the tree...

But excellent work [@mention:1566878604022076] - thanks!

Kevin is right - Discogs is great. They are constantly working on the app and it keeps getting better. You can create folders and categories for albums. On the iPhone app you can also shake the phone to bring up a random album, great for discovering albums you have forgotten about or just cant decide what to play!

I think this is one that Roon should solve. It should surely be trivial to produce a suitable .csv file based on its index. Yes, I know that it won’t be 100% to the standard which many here aspire to, but it would surely be 90%+, especially if the object is to avoid buying duplicates. Roon users here should perhaps put in the request?

Red Kite posted:

A List of my Naim Music

 

The presentation is a bit untidy and there must be a better way to get it in a spreadsheet. However the info is there and that’s what I needed when I’m in a charity shop, thinking have I got that one ?

 

Find your UnitiCore on your PC, or connect your Backup portable drive to view in windows explorer.

Navigate to the location of the MQ folder. Click to the right of the location address to make it go blue

Now just type in powershell.  This will open it ….

 

Then type tree   and this is what you get.

To copy the list you need to put your mouse in the title bar and right click for edit/copy.

Then paste to a word or txt document.

Have you tried Text to Column and Delimiter in Excel?

Things like this are interesting as there's always a million ways to do the same thing. Here's one that works.

Assume that your music is in a NAS drive and you've already mapped it to a drive letter. I use B: for no reason other than it isn't C: For me the folder structure is B:\Music\<artist>\<one to many sub folders per artist containing the CDs>

e.g. 

B:\Music\Barclay James Harvest\Mockingbird
B:\Music\Barclay James Harvest\Octoberon
B:\Music\Barclay James Harvest\Time Honoured Ghosts

Open a command window (Win key + R then type cmd then enter).

Type B: then enter to be on the B: drive, substituting B for your mapped drive's letter, then cd Music <enter> to change dir to the correct parent folder.

Robocopy is on all Windows versions since Vista, and this works a treat in W10.

robocopy . . /l /s /njh /njs /ns /lev:3 >C:\tmp\Music.csv

/l = list, do not copy, /s = sub folders, /njh = no job header, /njs = no job summary, /ns = no size, /lev = number of sub-directory levels to drill down to. 

Pipe it into a file with > c:\tmp\music.csv 

Hit enter to run it. It generates what you want, you may want to tidy up each artist having its empty top level folder listed but that's a minor issue.

It produces this (sample extract):

B:\Music\Allman Brothers Band\
B:\Music\Allman Brothers Band\Midnight Rider; The Essential Collection\
B:\Music\Arnesen\
B:\Music\Arnesen\MAGNIFICAT\
B:\Music\Bananarama\
B:\Music\Bananarama\Greatest Hits Collection\
B:\Music\Barclay James Harvest\
B:\Music\Barclay James Harvest\Mockingbird\
B:\Music\Barclay James Harvest\Octoberon\
B:\Music\Barclay James Harvest\Time Honoured Ghosts\
B:\Music\Barenaked Ladies\
B:\Music\Barenaked Ladies\Born on a Pirate Ship\
B:\Music\Barenaked Ladies\Gordon\
B:\Music\Barenaked Ladies\Stunt\
B:\Music\Barry Manilow\
B:\Music\Barry Manilow\Ultimate Manilow\
B:\Music\Barry White\
B:\Music\Barry White\Barry White_ The Collection\

George H posted:

Have you tried Text to Column and Delimiter in Excel?

Yes, that seems to work OK as well, but i still have the lines before the words. If there is a quick fix (no complicated scripts) for that it would look better without.

In Excel you can use find and replace to move them all, as thay all appear to be the same leading symbol and dashes. Simplest would be to copy the offending leading character chain, paste it into find and replace, add nothing to replace it with, then select “replace all”.

Excellent thanks !  There were three different types, so easy to remove.

I am more than happy with this now, no more getting home with duplicate CDs for me.

It only takes a couple of minutes from start to finish when you know how...the power of the internet and its forums

Hmm, that actually looks useful, and I may do myself - not for the same reason as I think I still remember whether or not I have something if I see it for sale, but because it then gives a neat way of checking for anomalies in the library, and maybe even a simple browse tool that might be better than Audirvana (my library software) for deciding what to play next

Red Kite posted:

Excellent thanks !  There were three different types, so easy to remove.

I am more than happy with this now, no more getting home with duplicate CDs for me.

It only takes a couple of minutes from start to finish when you know how...the power of the internet and its forums

Why not record a macro and press one button next time!