Genre Madness (iTunes related)
 

so the topic of this thread may be a bit dramatic or misleading...

when I add new music to my iTunes library I have a hard time defining it by one genre. I go to allmusic.com to tag the year and genre. trouble is, most time, the generic genre of "pop/rock" is often not enough. so I end up adding sub-genres and sub-sub-genre's so my genre tag for a particular artist ends up being...

Alt. Pop-Rock/Indie Electronic/Indie Rock/Indie Pop/Ambient Pop

This is a true example for Stereolab.

I guess I have all my bases covered, but it seems kind of excessive. I suppose there's no problem with it.

What does everyone else do about tagging genres? Am I insane?

I don't even tag for genres.

I tag 'em, but it's so subjective (which is fine in my own player). I don't get into super fine categories. For example, the mellower stuff I just call Adult Alternative. My New Wave folder is basically anything that's a bit fun and goofy. Anyone on this board looking at my tags might scratch their heads!

I pretty much ignore the Genre tags (just leave whatever gets filled in by Gracenote or whatever is backing iTunes these days). I just use playlists instead, so I can drop a song in however many category playlists I want.

I ignore it too (except for Christmas, which I tag to sort them come December)

The most important tags to me are artist, song title, album and year

The year is usually the one that needs the most correcting since I don't care about a compilation's year, but the years of each individual song

I bought a few multi-artist box sets last year (Nuggets, Doo Wop Box, Stax/Volt Singles). I used to navigate mostly by artist, but the new tracks flooded my artist list with one or two hit wonders, making it harder to find the artists I have multiple albums by. I've since changed the genre tags of all my tracks for easy navigation:

Rock & Pop Albums - single-artist albums (71 artists, 2468 songs, 204 albums)
Rock & Pop Singles - box sets with multiple artists, also individual singles (379 artists, 652 songs, 25 albums)

Looking at my IPod, I have the following genres:

Blues Albums, Bob Dylan Albums, Classical, Comedy, Frank Zappa Albums, Indie Rock & Pop Albums, Indie Rock & Pop Singles, Jazz Albums, Jazz Vocal, R&B Albums, R&B Singles, Rock & Pop Albums, Rock & Pop Singles, Soundtrack, World

I have broad genres, and will sometimes use the grouping tab to break them down a little. For example:
genre:electronica, grouping:breaks
genre:electronica, grouping:trance

Grouping. I like that idea. I haven't found a use for it yet.

Thanks mndtrp!

I tag for genres, but I keep it as limited as possible. I think I have maybe 10 genres. Blues, Christmas, country, Speed Metal, Heavy Metal, Rock, Alternative, Children's...a couple more. I do the fancy stuff in Comments or smart playlists.

You should be able to tag the box sets as Compilations, they may not clutter your Artist list then.

THe only real tags I use are to separate out live discs from studio tracks for my playlists. If it's an officially released live album, it just gets tagged "Live." in the genre. If it's unofficial, it gets tagged "Live.Bootleg." I do this b/c the quality varies so much from live disc to live disc, and I also hate the choppiness of sound that comes from going from studio track to live track.

I share your disgust with genre tags, though, in that music genres are just so damn hard to define.

Yeah, if you use the right combination of Genre tagging and Grouping you can make some freaking sick smart playlists. Sounds like I do pretty much the same thing as mndtrp.

I do a broad genre and then specific grouping (generally with many words). Making sure that I include the exact same words (Indie, Lo-Fi, Acoustic, Metal, etc) I then set up smart playlists to include/exclude these words in the grouping categories... then I have playlists itunes makes for me

It helps... expecially with music like the Magnetic Fields... who tend to jump all over the place in style (lo-fi, electronic, rock, country, etc), but I'd still pretty much consider the overall genre Indie.

It's hard, because it drives me crazy being so broad sometimes, prepare to make concessions!

I don't genre tag my music.

so you can fill up the grouping with tons of words in one field and it all works out okay with searches and playlists?