Topic: How do you guys handle genre? (Read 4430 times)

benn600 · « **on:** October 23, 2006, 11:55:07 pm »

I'm interested in hearing how you guys use the genre field? I don't do a whole lot with it because first, it is annoying how some songs on CDs have different genres and I am not willing to hand apply genres to 10K songs (obviously). Also, people disagree on a lot of genres. I'm not sure how they so easily categorize CDs for selling in stores, but I also notice they use a lot fewer genres. I would love to see a list of genre's you guys use but only if you have carefully compiled the list. If you just let it automatically fill in a genre from the CD database, I've pretty much got that. It would be great to be able to play by genre but it is not that valuable that I would put a lot of time into setting it up--and again, people disagree on items. I am much more likely to play from my 4/5 star playlist--my 5-star playlist has a 500 songs exactly at this moment and I cannot go wrong with that.

I just pulled up my list and am viewing Genres with cover art. One that stands out is Tribal which is the genre used for Rusted Root. I don't understand this a whole lot and this brings up another issue. If a genre has one or two artists or CDs, it is worthless! If you select Tribal expecting a variety of world type music, you'd be disappointed. Furthermore, Rock and Soft Rock are my largest categories. Rock has over 5K songs--or half my library. Soft Rock is pretty large followed by Country and then a lot of categories with 500 or less--many with 50 or less.

I've attached a poll just for a general idea of how many genres you guys have.

zirum · « **Reply #1 on:** October 24, 2006, 01:32:03 am »

I use Genre for low granularity genre like rock, pop, alternative, electronic, classic and other. Then I have a custom field Subgenre for more detailed genre.

Combined with ratings this make my day

But I am very interested in hearing others solutions.

Jaguu · « **Reply #2 on:** October 24, 2006, 02:19:58 am »

I use Genre for very basic distinctions such as Classical, Pop&Rock, Jazz, Film music, World music, New Age, but also to distinguish Videos and Images on a very rough level.
The finer granularity is achieved through a list field "Subgenre" which contains hundreds of entries, for music, images and videos.
I also use a list field "Period", which defines more of a time scale, used mainly in classical music and artwork, like Baroque, Rococo, Romanticism, Classicism, Modern etc.

I do not strive for perfection and can live very well with plenty of "unassigned" stuff.

InflatableMouse · « **Reply #3 on:** October 24, 2006, 02:55:44 am »

I started using the genre field recently. I created a custom field for subgenre and use a third field for mood.

I realize you can have songs that are a different genre from the rest of the album, but you need to look at the album and the artist as a whole.

Also, when I am behind my computer listening, I try to make a habit of rating the songs too.

Last but not least, I check AllMusic.Com for guidance on genre and moods. I don't copy it blindly though, they categorize way too many artists on 'rock'. I mean, Madonna, Joni Mitchell, Linda Ronstad ... rock music .... right.

4BYE · « **Reply #4 on:** October 24, 2006, 03:01:38 am »

Hello,

I use genres like "Ambient" , "Blues" "Bluegrass" "Country" "Pop" "Rock" "New Age & Synthesizer" "Rap & HipHop" "Classical" (about 30 genres) all with complete albums. With compilations it could be harder to handle but mostly it's one genre. Then I made several folders with 20 songs called "Theo's Choice"

with songs I like (singles). For compilations I use "Various" instead of "Muliple Artists" in [Album Artist]
This way I know where to look for compilations, but find all my singles also when needed. I forget to mention I allready start with folders like "Cajun & Zydeco"" where I put in Beausoleil and in that folder their albums with folder.jpg. This way I have a clean way to handle everything.

This way I can choose from genres following the mood I am.

For Video/dvd I use common genres like "Action/Adventure" "Comedy" "Thriller" "Documentary" etc.

For images I don't use genres yet. I have to think it over since with tagging I can find what I want.

Hope this gives you an idea.

lalittle · « **Reply #5 on:** October 24, 2006, 03:21:32 am »

I use 25 Genres at the moment. I used to have more, but it just didn't make sense to have so many since it just made finding things more difficult. I find that it's real easy to get caught up in "over-categorizing" everything -- it just makes everything more complex with no actual gain in real world use.

I also NEVER use ratings -- I just don't see the point in rating songs that I listen to myself. I know what I like when I'm listenning to it, and don't need to "record" my opinion (which will likely change anyway.) I've always found it interesting that others put such importance on this.

Larry

darichman · « **Reply #6 on:** October 24, 2006, 04:10:42 am »

I talked about how I set up genre categorisation here:

Quote

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=36580.0

...but didn't get much feedback on how others did it!

I try to use the genres listed at AMG for popular music, but use my own for classical.

enervation · « **Reply #7 on:** October 24, 2006, 05:09:05 am »

I currently have 42 genres... I combine genre and subgenre like this:
Metal
Metal/Orchestral
Metal/Symphonic
Metal/Thrash

etc
This is so that I can access subgenres on my handheld. There's probably a way to have separate genre and subgenre on MC, and combine them like above for syncing to handheld, but I haven't tried yet.

dcwebman · « **Reply #8 on:** October 24, 2006, 06:59:45 am »

I am curious as to why people are creating a new field for subgenre. Isn't that what Styles is used for?

Jaguu · « **Reply #9 on:** October 24, 2006, 08:11:59 am »

Quote

I am curious as to why people are creating a new field for subgenre. Isn't that what Styles is used for?

Don't find any Styles field in MC12

The problem is that J River introduces new fields from time to time, very often without any notice. By then, you already created your own user defined fields. And I never found any MC list that explains in detail for what some of the more obscure fields should really be used?

Do you know the meaning of the field "Flash"?
Do you know when J River introduced the field "Media Sub Type"?

Also, when evaluating the introduction of a new user defined field, I always think whether this field could be used for all media types or just one. You may want to use the same field "subgenre" for audio, video or images.

At some point I had image specific fields like "topic" and "subtopic", but then decided to stay with "Genre" and "Subgenre".

There are 2 basic ways of dealing with fields. a) Either you use them through all media types or b) you use them only for a specific media type. It would probably be a nice idea, if we could restrict fields to specific media types.

It's also a question how much information you want to store and keep a balance between those rather time consuming jobs of storing and tagging and expected value.

Also like lalittle I do not use ratings. It does not make sense to me. If I don't like something I just dump it. Why should I keep it on my hard disk, even if disk space is cheap nowadays!

Noman · « **Reply #10 on:** October 24, 2006, 08:28:41 am »

I only need 4 genres, Disco, Funk, Soul and Other

hit_ny · « **Reply #11 on:** October 24, 2006, 12:19:09 pm »

I have 60+ Genres, listen to very different music depending on mood or time of day.

I combine genre & sub-genre since i find the extra sub-genre of not much use (which prolly explains the large genre number

)

I even make up my own genres for those comps that are more of a mood ie the underlying theme of the music even if the tracks come from several other genres. Try to identify the common thread in a comp to get an idea what genre to use or even make up your own. Very easy to change later if you get a better idea.

So when i'm looking for a certain mood, i get what i'm looking for.

An example is a genre i call Lounge, Cafe , this would have tracks from genres like jazz, electronic, house, lo-fi, bossa etc. Cafe would be more the afternoon music and lounge would be more early evening. At some point i need to seperate these but have not got around to it yet.

Electronica is another i use to include rock with heavy influence from the eletronic/eletro world. It's very far from the dictionary definition of the term or the way its defined. Groups like the chemical brothers or the french group Air, Faithless etc.

Electronic is a very diverse genre, so i prefer to use the sub-genre here in place of the catch all Electronic. Mainly cos i'm more familiar with this genre then say Rock, where Pink Floyd, Doors, Beatles etc are all in the same genre of Rock.

Jazz+Funk for grps that include both elements in their music, Fela Kuti's music is technically defined as Afro-Beat but the feel of it is a combination of jazz & funk with some extra african elements thrown in for good measure.

You do come across artists that invent genres on thier own or those that don't want to be pigeon-holed so i saw a friend classify them as "genre of their own"

Heh, i'm one of those obssessive raters, its like a music diary, how i felt about an album/track on the [Last Played on] date. It changes over time sure, but this happens less the more you listen to it. You collect music because you want to listen to it again, if i did not rate what i listened to, i would prolly never remember what i thought about a particular album out of many by a certain artist in the future. I found track rating comes into its own when you use it to derive album ratings, then you can tell at a glance what you felt about an album as a whole.

Styles/Mood is something i would like to use but have not found a mangeable way to date to use it. If you look at AMG they list many moods for a single album only.

KingSparta · « **Reply #12 on:** October 24, 2006, 01:45:14 pm »

Quote

Don't find any Styles field in MC12

Make One

I Don't Have It Also So Jaguu Must Have Created It

LonWar · « **Reply #13 on:** October 24, 2006, 01:49:23 pm »

My Genres are:

Artist A-B
Artist C-D
Artist E-F etc.

If I wan't to see the Rolling stones on my Ipod, I just goto the correct Genre, R-S and pick the stones.
It easier to navigate then scrolling all the artists.

RobOK · « **Reply #14 on:** October 24, 2006, 02:33:29 pm »

i use genres, ratings and last played date to drive most of my SmartLists. I use pretty high level Ratings like Rock, Alternative, Jazz, Classical, with no sub genres.

benn600 · « **Reply #15 on:** October 24, 2006, 04:46:13 pm »

The flash field is for whether a flash was used or not in a photograph (I think).

The reason I rate is because there is no chance I would just delete files I didn't like. First, because someone else in my household might listen to it. Second, some guest might for some reason really like that song and in this case, you often change your opinion...so I'd have to go dig out the CD for it. Third, I paid for it, might as well make my library sound larger--I have 5 million songs?! Wow!

I would completely forget about some of my favorite music if not for my 5 star playlist. That thing is the best thing I can imagine in my playlists (thing=playlist).

jgreen · « **Reply #16 on:** October 24, 2006, 05:07:16 pm »

Every time this topic comes up, I get a lot of good ideas and then do notihing about it. I've got some tracks classified by genre, others by style, mood or sub-genre. Most of them overlap and none of them cover more than 5% of my tracks. So I keep listening to the same 10 or 20 tracks and wish I had more time+energy.

One thing I did try that worked out well, as far as I progressed with it, was creating a field called "instrument". This is for tracks that have a dominant soloist in them, be it guitar, piano, strings, brass, etc. Overwhelmingly, it describes intrumental tracks, classical or jazz, but Clapton, Page and Frampton are also included next to flamenco, classical, jazz crossover, etc.

Hugo_Elbuho · « **Reply #17 on:** October 24, 2006, 06:34:18 pm »

Anybody is insane tagger like me and use "Supergenre"?

I like to define for instance "Electronica" for genres Trance, House, Dance, Techno, and then Subgenres like Progressive, Italo, Vocal, etc.

Another one: SuperGenre "Soft" for genres Ballad, Soft Rock, Alternative Ballad, etc.

It's about flexibility (again) to hear what you want when it comes the day you don't feel in the mood to dig much deep into details. But there are days when i definitely like to hear specificly Vocal Trance!! :-)

It's a matter of taste (and time to tag too).

Best!

RobOK · « **Reply #18 on:** October 24, 2006, 06:47:35 pm »

Quote from: Hugo_Elbuho on October 24, 2006, 06:34:18 pm

I like to define for instance "Electronica" for genres Trance, House, Dance, Techno, and then Subgenres like Progressive, Italo, Vocal, etc.

I wish I had done that, but half the time I don't know what to call them -- I think I settled on Techno, Lounge, Disco, Electronic, House,... and something from a friend with a genre of "Chanson" -- I have been stuck with Chanson for a long time not knowing where to move it to ... LOL!

lalittle · « **Reply #19 on:** October 24, 2006, 11:20:11 pm »

Quote from: Hugo_Elbuho on October 24, 2006, 06:34:18 pm

I like to define for instance "Electronica" for genres Trance, House, Dance, Techno, and then Subgenres like Progressive, Italo, Vocal, etc.

Another one: SuperGenre "Soft" for genres Ballad, Soft Rock, Alternative Ballad, etc.

I get a headache just THINKING about having to categorize and classify everything with that level of detail. $:-\$

Quote

It's a matter of taste (and time to tag too).

Exactly.

Larry

jgreen · « **Reply #20 on:** October 24, 2006, 11:26:00 pm »

Hugo--

"Insane taggers" should upload to King Sparta's "Data Master" plugin. Then insanely lazy people like me can download prepared tags and be done with it!

hit_ny · « **Reply #21 on:** October 24, 2006, 11:53:13 pm »

There might be several choices genre wise to make for each album as everyone has their own system

Quote

One thing I did try that worked out well, as far as I progressed with it, was creating a field called "instrument". This is for tracks that have a dominant soloist in them, be it guitar, piano, strings, brass, etc. Overwhelmingly, it describes intrumental tracks, classical or jazz

I've had a similar idea like this for the jazz genre. Could not decide on the tag name to use. It's to do with the leader of the group whose name features on the album. How does that leader express themself ?

What if the album is about a vocalist like say ella fitzgerald or shirley horn, would instrument be vocal then ?

Hugo_Elbuho · « **Reply #22 on:** October 25, 2006, 12:07:16 am »

Quote

I get a headache just THINKING about having to categorize and classify everything with that level of detail

It used to be one day... but now for me it's kind of a philosophy i must attach to :-). Whenever friends come to my parties and see how detailed my library is tagged (in party mode of course... i couldn't afford to get those mad people to mess my data) they usually start joking on how unemployed i must be for taking that time, but you see the rewards when it comes to please an audience or yourself with exactly the type of music you know you want to hear.

Quote

"Insane taggers" should upload to King Sparta's "Data Master" plugin. Then insanely lazy people like me can download prepared tags and be done with it!

Hey!... i'm eager to share!

Quote

have been stuck with Chanson for a long time not knowing where to move it to ... LOL!

Chanson is "Song" in french my friend

so think about tagging it differently before you have a new french girlfriend and she notices that!!! LOL

RobOK · « **Reply #23 on:** October 25, 2006, 06:19:39 am »

Quote from: Hugo_Elbuho on October 25, 2006, 12:07:16 am

Chanson is "Song" in french my friend so think about tagging it differently before you have a new french girlfriend and she notices that!!! LOL

LOL! I'm sure it would have taken me all of 30 seconds to look up what that meant!! I think I'll leave it in genre "chanson" just to make me laugh when I see it! The artist is Vanessa Paradis.

dcwebman · « **Reply #24 on:** October 25, 2006, 07:17:42 am »

Quote from: Jaguu on October 24, 2006, 08:11:59 am

Don't find any Styles field in MC12

LOL, you're right.

That must have been a leftover from years ago when installing aTagger since allmusic.com uses Genre and then Styles. Anyway, that's what I use instead of subgenre.

benn600 · « **Reply #25 on:** October 25, 2006, 09:18:42 am »

I think a new database for music should be started just like wikipedia. Everything available to media players for downloading would be online in a searchable format. Better yet, when you try to use it, you would have to enter your username and password so it could link your music to your account. This would allow you to see if you have a certain song or CD from any internet browser. This database would be hand edited by people and verified. A user would enter a new CD and it would be pending. So, the user would see a warning that the data is pending. Fear not, you can still rip the CD. But, your program would check daily for updates and if the data updates, everything would be updated in your library. Data would be pending until 10 established users check and confirm/suggest changes and at least 3 confirmed workers (top users) agree to set it as official.

The data would include Song, Artist, Album, Genre, Year, Lyrics, and Notes. Lyrics would contain hand perfected lyrics and Notes would contain interesting facts about the music such as the detailed information on the song Luka by Suzanne Vega--basically summarizing general thoughts or reviews and highlighting specific points that the artist confirmed personally--ie that Luka is about child abuse. Personal confirmation from the artist is truly helpful and important.

jgreen · « **Reply #26 on:** October 25, 2006, 10:06:53 am »

Benn, King Sparta is trying to do this right here, right now, with his "Data Master" plugin. You can help by installing his plugin and uploading your selected info. If I understand his goal, he's eventually going to go a step better than a true wiki, and offer a popularity-based rating for the tag info submitted, to help improve accuracy.

MrHaugen · « **Reply #27 on:** October 25, 2006, 03:36:52 pm »

Good to hear that there are others like me

I have been using Genre, Subgenre and track, artist and album rating for a while now.
When I started I had about 8000 tracks. That was a project that took me about 3 months to complete.
Many hours, many evenings. But after that it was no problem at all. Just took each albums as I imported them. No sweat really.
Now I got 13 000 tracks, and have not regretted it for 1 second

When people do not understand why we do this, I just start smiling.
My days of picking each song or album I want to listen to, or manually making a playlist, is over for sure.

The ease of having a bunch of smartlists you can play, and get mood apropriate music, with different songs each time, and ONLY with music you like (or not like, if you want), is the best!
The possibilities are almost endless.

I studied genres for about 10 hours to get a overview of the basics. I normally look up the genre on www.answer.com and/or put it in the right genre/subgenre of what I feel is the right one.
When it comes to genre, there are not much right or wrong.
Just do whatever makes YOU feel that the grouping is correct.

KingSparta · « **Reply #28 on:** October 25, 2006, 07:31:02 pm »

Quote from: jgreen on October 25, 2006, 10:06:53 am

Benn, King Sparta is trying to do this right here, right now, with his "Data Master" plugin. You can help by installing his plugin and uploading your selected info. If I understand his goal, he's eventually going to go a step better than a true wiki, and offer a popularity-based rating for the tag info submitted, to help improve accuracy.

Yes, Not Right Now However.

Once The Plug-In Is Established And More Users Submit Data, What Can Happen Is I Write A Program To Scan The Data Submitted For That Field. This Will Take Each Field For That "Artist", "Album", "Song", Etc... And See What Users Have Submitted. Then Based On That A Supreme User Will Be Created For That Data For That Field.

So If 90 Users Submit A Genre For A Song As "Rock" And 6 Users Submit "R&B" And 4 Users Submit Blues. The Supreme User Will Have The Data That Most Users Feel Is Correct.

So It Is Very Important That Users Don't Just Take Data But Submit To The Server.

Just To Let You Know There Has Not Been Any Bug Reports From The Beta Testers In The Past 4 Days, And Has Not Crashed On Any System In Over 2 Weeks.

Even If You Don't Want To Install It, You Can Go To My Website To See Images Of It, Along With The Help File At My Site, That Explains How Things Work. Look At The Lower Part Of The Main Page At www.SpartaSoftware.com For My Plug-ins Page. Also There Is A Thread In The 3rd Party Forum That Explains It A Bit Also.

Note That The Plug-In Deals With More Fields Than Just Genre. It Deals With All User Created And Stock MC Fields. The Common Fields Would Be Lyrics, Notes, Artist Bios, Comments, And All The Other Fields To Include Any Sub Genre Fields Users Create.

I Am Thinking About How To Allow the Plug-In To Submit Your User Created Fields So Other Users Can Browse Them And Then Add Them To Your Media Center Database. Once That Is Done Any Data That the User Submitted For That Field Can Be Downloaded By Any User That Uses The Plug-In.

park · « **Reply #29 on:** October 26, 2006, 12:25:26 am »

That sounds interesting Kingsparta. Does the plugin allow you to just download one field? I have carefully tagged all my albums, so dont need "Genre" "Artist" etc. info. I only want the missing "Date" information for a bunch of albums.

hit_ny · « **Reply #30 on:** October 26, 2006, 12:46:39 am »

Quote from: KingSparta on October 25, 2006, 07:31:02 pm

So It Is Very Important That Users Don't Just Take Data But Submit To The Server.

Do it the discogs way then ?

Upload minimum 2 -5 albums (you decide how many) that are not in the database before being able to download anything.

KingSparta · « **Reply #31 on:** October 26, 2006, 05:18:47 am »

Quote

That sounds interesting Kingsparta. Does the plugin allow you to just download one field?

Yes

Manualy it does not apply anything onless you tell it to.

in a batch it only fills in blank fields.

gappie · « **Reply #32 on:** October 26, 2006, 06:41:50 am »

i only have 5 genres.
jazz, rock/pop, exotic, classical and rubbish.

INTERACT FORUM

Poll

So, how many genre's do ya use?

Author Topic: How do you guys handle genre? (Read 4430 times)

gappie