Hi guys,

well, I know is the 1 million dollar question and is very personal. I'm just getting confused how to group my "tastes"...

After appling genres I'm starting to have problems to decide if this or that song is: Rock or Pop or Rock Pop or Pop Rock or Smooth Rock or Smooth Pop or New Age Vocal or New Age acustic or Ballads or Symphonic Rock or Pop Dance, Dance or Hip Hop/ Rap or Oldy and so on... could you maybe give some ideas? or tell how do you genre your music?, I know there is no perfect system for this. At the beginning I thought, well all what sounds like Rock is Rock and all what sounds like this is that. But I'm starting to realise that how can you mix Pink Floyd with Queen? How do you group e.g. Enia? or ...and so on, what are the adventages of having more genre groups and be very selective to having less genre groups?

Thanks
Mario

The advantage to having more specific genre groups is that you can more easily search by that genre, and better suit your mood at the moment. I can't really think of an advantage to less specific genres at the moment, except for that it saves time and energy

I don't do anything with the genre field, and most genres are made up anyway. My favorite overall has to be the entire "post-grunge" category. I mean, hell, grunge lasted for about three years, and post-grunge is going on ten! I also don't think I'd want to be considered "post-anything" if I were a band.

But anyway, sorry to not help with your question, but I don't like genre classification. But if I had a band, we'd consider ourselves "power slop"

I know what you mean. I seem to mainly like bands that I can't pidgeon-hole easily - Tom Waits, John Cale and Giant Sand spring to mind as having a variety of styles not only over their albums, but with the albums themselves.

I've ended up using "Rock" for anything vaguely mainstream, and "Alternative" for stuff that isn't. Mind you, I don't use the genre searches anyway, so it's all rather academic. I have a set of genre playlists into which I put entire artists, but this also leads to rather erratic mixes - I mean, Cale's "Eat/Kiss" soundtrack alongside his "Sabotage" live album?

Bryan.

If it's got an acoustic guitar in, it's Folk. If it's got an electric guitar in and it's good, it's Indie. Otherwise if it's got an electric guitar in, it's Rock. If it's got no guitars, and you can't hear the synths for the drum machine, it's Dance. If it's got no guitars, and you can't hear the drum machine for the synths, it's Electronic. If it's got no guitars, and you can't hear the drum machine or the synths for the vocals, it's Rap. If it's got no guitars, drum machine, synths, or rapping, it's probably chamber music .

Peter

This is the fundamental problem with categorizing music - and the basis for my gripe with genres. The ID3 tags only allow you to assign 1 genre to the music - when in many cases music transcends those boundaries and could be included in several genres.

I don't even bother with the genre setting - and its such a shame since the empeg allows you to search by genre. Does anyone use the genre tag at all?

I just group my music in my playlists in very general genres - classic rock, rock, metal, dance, etc. To keep my top level neat, I put less frequently used genres under an "Other" entry, such as humor, country, classical, etc.

The ID3 tags only allow you to assign 1 genre to the music

That's not true. From the ID3v2.4 Frame Definitions (which is currently not available for me, so try the Google cache):

 TCON

   The 'Content type', which ID3v1 was stored as a one byte numeric

   value only, is now a string. You may use one or several of the ID3v1

   types as numerical strings, or, since the category list would be

   impossible to maintain with accurate and up to date categories,

   define your own. Example: "21" $00 "Eurodisco" $00



   You may also use any of the following keywords:

   

     RX  Remix

     CR  Cover

Of course, the empeg and emplode won't understand that, as they don't have support for multiple genres, but it's readily available in the ID3v2 spec.

Mario, check out www.allmusic.com. I think the genres listed at there are pretty straightforward. The only problem is that there's more than one genre listed for a given artist.

Mario, check out www.allmusic.com. I think the genres listed at there are pretty straightforward. The only problem is that there's more than one genre listed for a given artist.

Definitely check out All Music as Tony suggested. I still tend to make up many of my own, since I'm the only one the genres have to make sense to

I use the most specific genre in the ID3 tag but my playlist has Genres and Sub-Genres (or styles, to use the All Music convention). My only genres are Metal, Rock, Pop, Electronic, International, Classical, Jazz/Blues, and Hip-Hop. I have among all these probably 25 or 30 styles (which are in the ID3 tag).

For example: I have a Metal genre, under which I have Heavy Metal, Death Metal, Grindcore, Hardcore, Alternative Metal, Thrash, and a couple of others that escape me at the moment.

That way I can listen to the entire genre or just a particular style.

I think Faith No More is by far the hardest to assign a genre. I'm also curious, Tony, what you put Rush under: Prog Rock? Rock?

What about Mr Bungle? What do you call that?

Since I don't organize my music by genre and I don't do genre-searches, I haven't been strict about assigning the genre tag. Other than to correct an obviously incorrect CDDB tag assignment. <side rant: Why do my files at MP3.com come out as "Blues" when downloaded, even though I clearly tagged them as "Comedy" when I sent them to MP3.com? Grrr>. So sometimes my Rush albums are tagged as "rock", sometimes as "progressive rock".

Ah, but you left out blues and jazz.

I tag mine but not by songs, by cd's. And if an artist does more than one type, I just use what that artist does the most of. Like Eric Clapton does some blues and some rock but I class them all as blues. I've never done a genre search though but that is how I break down my playlists.

Circus performers on LSD

Know what I do with genre's? Nothing! I leave it blank. Honestly I don't care what genre it is, I don't pick music that way. I've spent enough time ripping 600 + CD's that I have no interest in tags beyond name, album, track name, and track number. Just one opinion though - screw genre.

What about Mr Bungle? What do you call that?

Yeah, pretty much anything involving Mike Patton fails to fit into one genre..... FNM, Bungle, Tomahawk, Fantomas, etc.

Heh. That's roughly how I have mine categorized. The one part where I went off on a bit of a tangent is if it's got an electric guitar that spends most of its time doing some variation of scales exercises, and the lead singer spends half his time screaming over top the guitar, and my parents wouldn't be able to handle more than about 2 minutes, it's Metal.

I agree. That stuff is whacked out.

And I agree. I made a concerted effort to delete the genre tags from all my stuff. I'm not gonna use it, so I just don't put it in there.

All my stuff is rock anyway

Funny. I genre-type each individual track! And it's definately paid off in the long run.

Well of course there is more than one genre listed for a lot of artists! Just because they have released one death metal song doesn't been that everything else they produce is going to belong to that genre. The most interesting artists tend to experiment with a number of different styles. The assignment of genres really has to be carried out on a song by song basis, and I agree, it's not easy!