ACCESS MUSIC COLLECTION DATABASE

Hi Tracey,

I'm afraid I disagree with the links Christy provided. The first link only shows a single table being created and not a well designed table at that. The second refers to a template that no longer exists.

This link describes a database schema for a music database 

https://musicbrainz.org/doc/MusicBrainz_Database/Schema

It may be overkill for you, but can give you a starting point.

At the least you need several tables. A CD table that has basic info about the CD; Title, Artist, Genre, Release Year, etc. This then makes the need for an Artist table and a Genre table. You then need a Tracks table that lists the tracks for each CD with the CD_ID as a foreign key, and title, length etc.

You may need to change this if your CDs are compilations. You may want to move the artist and genre fields to the Tracks if there will be multiple artists and genres on a CD.

If you need further clarifications please feel free to ask.

Before locking in to an application you should do some design work, ask yourself some questions.

Access may be overkill. Are you comfortable using Excel? It may be an option.

The most important question is "What do you want to do with this information!" / How do you want to use it?  Do you want a simple list of names so you don't get dupes, or much more detailed descriptive info?

• How big is your collection (count) ?
• What sort of information do you want to keep about your records? (how many different pieces (fields/columns) of data do you want to keep?)
• How much "shared" information (same info used in multiple entries)  do you want to collect, ie record company/publisher, category etc
• What do you want to DO with this information?
• What sort of information will you be searching for?
• How "OCD" are you about this information?

Here are a couple of links about using Excel for this sort application (of course, much of this information can also be translated to Access).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWQte_GiTwc

https://www.excelmadeeasy.com/template-collection-management.php

https://londonjazzcollector.wordpress.com/buying-records-online/cataloging-your-collection/

https://ourpastimes.com/how-to-decode-matrix-stamper-numbers-on-vinyl-lps-12248312.html

https://www.pryor.com/blog/ease-the-pain-of-data-entry-with-an-excel-forms-template/