I completely agree. For listening, it’s great to just eyeball what’s in front of you and grab something.
The catalogue topic came about as I started buying CDs again - I was trying to fill-in what I didn’t already have on vinyl. And have inevitably duplicated some albums. Truth really be told, I’ve also bought some of the same CDs twice as I’ve not ripped them and didn’t see them in any of the music apps.
So for me, it’s more of a ‘what do I have?’ before I go out and buy something.
With the CLZ Music app on my mobile, I just give it a shake and it displays a random album. Good for when you want something different to play! 
Dammit!!! How did I not know this after years of using CLZ? Love it. Thank you 
Lovely! New to me too.
I just gave CLZ a try and it doesn’t seem to recognise that some albums have two or more discs when scanning barcodes, or am I missing something? It’s only seeing or pulling down content for “disc1”.
That happens. Remember that the database is user populated, so sometimes things aren’t as you might expect.
When I come across that problem, I search using the artist/title function and that usually throws out a long list of versions. Just find the one that matches your CD/record.
Occasionally, you might need to enter an album manually. Most often because it’s a new release and you’re the first one to try and find it. When I have had to do this, I try to put in as much detail as I can and as accurately as I can so others can find it easily.
I have mine catalogued in an Excel spreadsheet. It used to be an Access file which was better still but with subsequent PC changes and the need for a new MS Office licence that fell by the wayside.
I have a modest collection of about 2500 albums, and while I couldn’t list them, if I was thinking of buying an album by a particular artist or group then I know which titles I have.
Or if you’re entering the data onto a PC you can get it to read the physical discs. You can then move the second disk into the first album to have two discs together.
Sometimes the barcode reader will recognise it as a double album.
Thanks Graeme, I’m having a play with that now.
Okay, I’m hooked! 
I like the idea of serendipity, but if you have a good-sized collection that’s not organised and decide you feel like listening to a particular album, you’ll have a hard time finding it, unless you’re very patient. Once or twice I’ve misfiled something, then not seen that album again for months or years.
There are many ways to get around the tendency of digital systems to inhibit exploration. Discogs has a “show me a random record from my collection,” but it’s poorly implemented. I’ve been a regular AllMusic user for about 20 years, and they make a fair stab at addressing this, with links to Similar Albums, Moods and Themes, and so on. Also rudimentary.
When I first started exploring streaming music, I was disappointed by (among other things) the lack of any taxonomy. In Tidal, under My Collection > Albums, you can only filter by title. Tidal has an API, but I’ve not investigated it. If streaming was my main music source, I would be interested in creating some kind of open source interface that would allow adding categories, tags, recognising albums as entities, and so on. I’m surprised nobody’s done this yet (or maybe they’ve tried and been thwarted).
I built a database using Filemaker Pro (used to be an Apple product, but now owned by Claris) to catalogue my physical CDs and all my FLAC files in Apple, Qobuz and Roon. I can search the database in a myriad of ways and export data to Excel as needed. I have a simple process to upload the data to my database: fetch any missing metadata using SongKong, then add the file to Roon and export all the album, track and composition metadata to Excel and import the structured Excel data to my database. The database is relational with tables for album, track, composition, composer, orchestra, conductor and performers. I enjoy playing about with database design in a hobby sense but am no expert, so my database is not polished software by any means. When i just want to find something quick to play I use Roon or Innuos Sense, Roon is better for classical tag searching.
Cheers, Ian
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