Beyond Category is a relational data base application used to catalog a music album collection. The term album is used in the traditional sense of a collection of recorded songs by an artist or group of artists under a single title. That is, a cd, lp, cassette or book of 78s. Beyond Category will store information about the album, songs and composers on the album, and names of other performers on the album. Beyond Category is named with a nod towards Duke Ellington, who truly is beyond category.
This program allows entry of album information including title, catalog number, label, genre, media type (cd, lp, etc.), value, location and grade info. Tracks for each album are stored with song title and composer(s), personnel, recording date, track/side, and timing.
Songs, personnel, and writers are all entered separately into the database and then linked into the album. This means that, for instance, a song title will be entered once and then selected as many times as needed on any album. If you have ten albums containing the song “Star Dust” and later on you realize that the tune is correctly spelled “Stardust” – you only need to update the spelling in one place and that will propagate the correction to all the albums where the song is inclcuded.
I recommend that the Beyond Category Starter Database be downloaded along with the Beyond Category software. New users might consider to skip downloading the Starter Database and create their own data from scratch, but why bother entering commonly used names, song titles and instrument abbreviations that are already provided. Using the Starter Database, work on entering albums in the collection can proceed immediately.
Feel free to contact me at steve@steve-albin.com with any questions or problems you might have. I enjoy supporting my program. I’m very interested in receiving any feedback regarding your experience with Beyond Category.
See Release Notes for change details
Installation
Macintosh:
For the Macintosh, the download will be a mountable disk image file or .dmg file named Beyond Category Software.dmg. Double-click Beyond Category Software.dmg; a new disk drive should appear called Beyond Category Software. Drag the Beyond Category icon into your Applications folder.
Windows:
For Windows, download the BeyondCategorySetup_n_n.exe installer (n_n represents the current version) and double-click to install all files in your system’s Program Files directory. Do not change the location of the folder contents.
Starter Database:
The Starter Database contains thousands of entries for song titles, personnel names, label names, composer names, and instrument. There is no album data except for one example of the Miles Davis Kind of Blue album. Use of the Starter Database for Beyond Category is strongly recommended. The Starter Database will save you hours of time entering the basic building blocks of album information.
The download is a file using zip compression. Download the file to your computer and simply double click the file icon to unzip (decompress) the archive. Then place the unzipped file where you like to store your documents.
This database file will work with the Macintosh or Windows version of Beyond Category.
Do you really think you need to create a new database from scratch? Contact me and I’ll provide an empty database.
System Requirements
Macintosh:
• Mac OS X 10.9.5 or later
Macintosh users will run into issues with Gatekeeper. Beyond Category is not a code signed application. Apple will not automatically recognize Beyond Category as safe for your computer. You can find out more about this on Apple’s web page regarding Gatekeeper.
Registering with Gatekeeper is not free. It also requires more work to create the app. I’ve been working on Beyond Category since 1995 and have always offered it for no charge, so there is no motivation for me to pay to have this app code signed. Other than just saying “trust me” regarding any malware that may be included in Beyond Category, I can only offer the references of other satisfied users.
Windows:
• Windows 7 (SP1+), Windows 8.1, Windows 10
Windows users with Windows Defender installed will need to override that protection when installing on Windows. I do not have a certificate for Windows. My explanation for that is the same that I provide for the Macintosh version.