Genre is a real pain!( In general, not because of MM )

jmaver · Post by **jmaver** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 6:17 pm

First Amazon doesn't have it, so you have to look it up manually on CDDB or allmusic.
Second, I have been trying to keep my albums grouped by genre, and keep the number of genres small. So, Dance contains techno, electronica, trance, etc.
Third, it would be nice if all the albums for an artist were together. But some artists just won't stay in their genre, they are all over the place.
Fourth, the difference between Rock and Pop is so blurred, I wonder if there is any point to keeping them separate.
Anyone got a system that just works?

jmaver · Post by **jmaver** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 7:54 pm

BTW, this is what I am using for Auto-Organize now:
F:\!Music\!<Genre>\<Album Artist>\<Album>\<Track#>-<Title>$If(<Artist>=<Album Artist>,,-{<Artist>})

This only puts artist in if it is different than album artist, and puts it in {} so that it is easier to parse in later if needed. Just using - as separators doesn't work in many cases because many songs have them as part of the title.

Pablo · Post by **Pablo** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 8:44 pm

Well, I agree with you, that's why I don't use genre anymore in auto-organize. Some improvements like sub-genres or multiple genres have been requested, but I don't think they would solve the problem completely, especially for organization purposes.

pah68 · Post by **pah68** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 9:39 pm

Let me just get one thing clear.

Rock and Pop are different, nothing alike and could never possibly....even a little tiny bit be confused.

Britney Spears = Pop
Nickelback = Rock

There is a genre known as Rock / Pop though for those very occasional 'iffy' ones.

Pablo · Post by **Pablo** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 9:46 pm

Britney Spears and Nickelback ok, but what about, say, U2? Is it pop or rock? (or something else?)

jmaver · Post by **jmaver** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 9:52 pm

Exactly. Some groups are too hard to classify even between albums.
Allmusic makes pop a subgenre of rock.

pah68 · Post by **pah68** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 10:01 pm

Pablo wrote:Britney Spears and Nickelback ok, but what about, say, U2? Is it pop or rock? (or something else?)

Rock...except for that one album they did in the 90's with Lemon on it.

pah68 · Post by **pah68** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 10:04 pm

When I'm not sure, I'll use CD Universe (Provided as one of the MM options) to look up genre, and the classification is buy album not artist. I agree with 95% of the genre classifications.

Empyre · Post by **Empyre** » Sun Feb 13, 2005 1:09 pm

Well I just looked up Maria Carey - #1's (First album in my library) in CD Universe... it said the genre is "Pop, R&B, Rock, Contemporary R&B, Rock / Pop" which one would you pick??

pah68 · Post by **pah68** » Sun Feb 13, 2005 4:50 pm

Usually the 1st one, unless I totally disagree and then I'll work from left to right.

There are so many sub genres nowadays that it's pretty subjective.
Mariah Carey would be Pop though for sure.

sadao · Post by **sadao** » Sun Feb 13, 2005 5:13 pm

Yeah, this is truly a challenge. To deal with the subgenre issue, I tag all my tracks in the ??? - ?????? format where the first three question marks represent the supergenre, and everything to the right of the hyphen represents the subgenre:

Code: Select all

ELE - Trance
ELE - Drum and Bass
ELE - Downtempo
POP - Tart (there goes Britney)
RCK - Hard Rock
RCK - Heavy Metal

Etc. Then, using Pablo's magic nodes I can create a super genre node that takes the first three letters of the genre which can then be expanded to show the subgenre (pending the addition of a little extra functionality in the script

).

The advantage of this system is that you end up with a very limited set of supergenres, but as many subgenres as you wish. And there is always the - General subgenre for when you just can't figure out if you're listening to Gypsy or Dixie Jazz. Another advantage is that you can use auto playlist and select on the first three letters to choose a supergenre, and exclude some specific sub genres.

Obviously this is a hack workaround for the lack of a sub genre tag, but I find it works pretty well. There is of course the issue of multi genre tracks, or different countries of origin (french rap, anyone?).

@JMmaver, what does the '!' achieve in the auto-organize mask?

jmaver · Post by **jmaver** » Sun Feb 13, 2005 8:21 pm

It sorts them to the top.

I use it for category type folders, like genre, so that they don't intermix with other windows normal folders.

sadao · Post by **sadao** » Sun Feb 13, 2005 9:24 pm

jmaver wrote:It sorts them to the top.
I use it for category type folders, like genre, so that they don't intermix with other windows normal folders.

I get it. I usually use '_' to achieve the same effect.

Empyre · Post by **Empyre** » Mon Feb 14, 2005 5:49 am

sadao wrote:

Code: Select all

ELE - Trance
ELE - Drum and Bass
ELE - Downtempo
POP - Tart (there goes Britney)
RCK - Hard Rock
RCK - Heavy Metal

Now thats a good idea!
I think ill do something similar, probably use the Genre tag for the super-genre and a custom field for the sub-genre. that way it stays nice and generic when it gets to my ipod but is still nice and granular for my main library. It will make it easier to sort out the data if MM ever add sub-genres to the database too.

Thank you!

One tagging issue down, only "multiple artist per track", "album year/track year", "album rating", "artist rating" and putting in moods and tempo's to go lol

@jmaver i also use '_' to achieve the same effect.

Post by **Lowlander** » Mon Feb 14, 2005 10:18 am

I generally use the super genre in the genre names. Like hard rock, classic rock, punk rock, rock rock & roll. And even Rock en Español and Dutch Rock. This way if I search for rock all variants are displayed. Also the same goes for when I look for Dutch music. As I also have Dutch Pop, etc.

This looks estatically a little better I guess.

There have been requests to be able to use super genre's with sub genre's.