database program for music collection, finally

I have been using CDTrustee and just downloaded the trial version of this program. They seem very similar except this program may be a little cheaper. The problem I have with my current program is the format of printed reports. Reports are limited to preset formats in the program. I would like to have a program that allows customized reports or at least reports that are based on vinyl collections. My ideal report would have one printed line per record. The records would be sorted and grouped by artist and listed by year of release. Information for each record would include Album title, year of release, label, cat. #, condition & notes. In the very limited time I have been playing with this trial version the reports don't appear to be able to be customized. All of predefined report formats seem to be designed for a CD collection played on a 200 disc jukebox or from a hard drive.

Is anyone familiar enough with either of these programs to know if the printed output described above is possible? Or is the only option to use a data base program as mentioned in a prior post. The internet search features on these programs allow for instantly adding most all album info which allows building a collection in a fraction of the time of typing everything into a data base manually. They do have their advantages in this reguard. To be fair both programs also include report formats that print all album info. But I figure this type of report would use a couple reems of paper and a few printer cartridges for a thousand plus piece vinyl collection.

Please excuse the rant, but does anyone know of a better way?

A programmer friend could build exactly what we want for not much money at all but I wouldn't be interested if it couldn't access the CDDB database. He and I have talked about every feature I could dream up and he indicated it's not much work for him. I had thought that I'd just give him some money and offer it here for free but nobody would want to enter that much information. It would be an M$ app only too which is, how do I say it correctly, too bad? I assume the CDDB is not free. Anyone know?

It looks to me like the collectorz is a better program than the one I found. It looks like it can print out the way you want bld63 and both access the cddb stuff but the collectorz goes further and looks more places.

I have been playing with these and it appears that the only one that accesses a site called freedb is the Kix Music Catalouge. This site has a database of LPs that the other program doesn't find. CollectorZ is far superior in features, but it can't find the vinyl. Since I'm looking to catalog 1000's of records I may not have a choice but to use the clunkier program.

Any other suggestions?

Herman,

Thanks for the heads up on collecorz. I downloaded the trial version for it also. The ability to customize reports looks promising. I have been able to find some vinyl but it seems you have search artist & title. Maybe this weekend I will have time to figure out which program is best for me.

Thanks, Bryan