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[Well1234]

I am annoyed that I can only seem to assign one genre.

For example, I might like to classify Bob Dylan as acoustic AND singer/songwriter AND folk and then see Bob Dylan tracks in each of the 3 genres in a view where genre as a criteria.

Anyone know I can accomplish this?

[rocketsauce]

Create new custom fields to add 2nd, 3rd, etc genres. Tools/Options/Tree & View Settings.

Rob

[Well1234]

Yeah, I looked at that.  But then I would have to subordinate the genres in the schema tree.  That is, I would have to select genre then custfield1 then custfield2 rather than have a song appear under the 3 same-level genres.

Thanks for the reply though.

[JSmithson]

It would be great if you could list genres as 'country : rock' and have MC treat it as both genres, but that doesn't work. (Maybe someday). My solution is to create a Playlist Group called 'SuperGenre' that contains a bunch of Smartlists.
Blues - genre=blues
Rock - genre=rock
Country - genre=country
R&B - genre=R&R or genre=soul
etc....
I then have a ViewScheme created for 'SuperGenre/Genre/Artist/Album'
I have tagged my files with genres such as 'blues rock' or 'folk rock' etc..
Now when I click on the 'blues' SuperGenre in the tree it expands to 'blues rock' and 'electric blues' and 'traditional blues' and any other genre with blues in it.
That 'blues rock' album would also be under the 'rock' SuperGenre.
This is not what you asked for and it is kind of slow.... but it allows you have two levels of genre in your view schemes......

[Cmagic]

Hi Well,

What you can also do is to add you own Custom Genre (Tools | Options | Tree & View settings) and set its Data Type as "List (semicolon delimited)".
You will then be able to enter genres in the form : "Accoustic;SongWriter;Folk" or "Garage;Trash;Punk" or any combination.
If you create a view scheme with your Custom genre field, each genre will be listed separately.

Christian

[CautionESPN]

Just to re-iterate.  Media Center: Coolest software ever

Great functionality there....darnit now I have to go and update Genres for 4000 songs.

Chris M

[zevele10]

another thing you can do is just to know the music you have ,like it you do not need genre at all

[Well1234]

JSmithson,

Yeah, tried this.  A bit awkward though.  A lot of typing, managing, etc.


CMagic,

Looks pretty good.  Lots of typing though.  Too bad you can't predefine the genres and select them from the combo and delimit them with semicolons.  Seems like you gotta type the whole comma delimited string for each track.  I wonder of the info is saved in the ID3 2.4 (2.3?) tag?  Sorts very nicely in the schema.

Thanks for the replies.....

[gkerber]

I like this idea, thanks for the info, I'll be doing lots of typing too.

There are reasons for using genre's, even if one can remember what music we have.

When in the mood for a specific type of music, grouping by genre can make the list shorter, and hence the music easier to find.

And when using my pda and WebRemote, it make the data retrieval time shorter, due to a smaller list.

[NoCodeUK]

Well,
If you use the Properties Dialog rather than typing into the list it uses auto complete so you can select your genres from the drop down as you type...

Adam

[GrumpyNick]

another thing you can do is just to know the music you have ,like it you do not need genre at all

I agree 100% - my library has only 3 genres - Jazz, Latin and Easy Listening. Everything else is blank be it rock, metal, dance or whatever. How the heck do you classify someone like Bjork? Or Pulp? Or Muse? Or Zwan? etc etc

Listening to: 'WR' from 'Mi Media Naranja' by 'Labradford' on Media Center 9.0

[fex]

... my library has only 3 genres - Jazz, Latin and Easy Listening ...  How the heck do you classify someone like Bjork? Or Pulp? Or Muse? Or Zwan? etc etc ...

Maybe you should use one or two genres more?

Listening to: 'Crying' from 'Debut' by 'Björk' on Media Center 9.0

[Soundman]

Another powerful way to do multiple Genres to just use Playlists instead.  Create a Playlist group called Genres, and a create a playlist underneath it for each genre that you use.  Then, in the file information pane, you can simply check all the "grenres" that apply.  This is much easier than typing, and eliminates spelling errors.  Now, your playlist scheme based on playlist will put a song under each of the playlists (aka genres) that it belongs to.

I have been organizing my music this way, and I never even bother with the Genre field anymore.

The only drawback I know of is that genre information managed this way is only known within MC's library.  It is not stored in the ID2 tag.  This does not bother me, but some who use the files with other programs may care.

[DougHamm]

WMP9 does it well using semicolons...you can specify a genre within the tag, but when you drag a file or files to a new genre you're asked whether to replace or append.  

Appending only modifies the database, not the tag information, so your music files are still tagged with one standard genre (the first one you chose).

[JSmithson]

I didn't realize some of the other ways people do this, but I'm going to make another pitch for doing it the 'SuperGenre' way that I described above.
You get more than the one bird with your stone.
A track with 'Country Rock' will get the track listed under both rock and country, which was the original request.....
But doing it this way also gives you a two level genre view sheme. I can look at all my Jazz at once or expande the view to
Jazz
    Cool Jazz
    Jazz Bebop
    Free Jazz
    Acid Jazz

This allows me to look at smaller groups of songs. If you're like me (a little crazy about organizing and subdividing) it works.

So I get both out of this approach.

Plus if you define your genres....
Jazz Free
Jazz Bebop
Jazz Acid   etc
When you download to your Ipod you kind of have a two level genre tree.....  (But you lose the multiple genre part......)  Can't have everything......

[V-Man]

Can't remember for sure, but I think if you've already added a particular value as one item in a semicolon-delimited list field and have that item (eg genre) in the left-hand tree, you can add that genre to other files by dragging them onto the tree node.

[Well1234]

Yeah on this last point by Vman....and to add to an earlier post,

If you create a custom field (ie MyGenres) and define it as a list then you can type in a value like
"singer/songwriter;acoustic;folk" to the tag of MyTrack and then if you use MyGenres in a Schema MyTrack will show up in all 3 genres (very nice).

This custom field does seem to be stored with the ID tag but I guess in a format only MC can recognise.

Also dragging and dropping does work nicely.

If I drag MyTrack to a Genre (actually to a "MyGenres") of say "folk-rock" then MyGenres is automatically updated to:

"singer/songwriter;acoustic;folk;folk.rock"

Very cool and very nice.

[Well1234]

Sorry, I meant MyGenres is updated to:

"singer/songwriter;acoustic;folk;folk-rock"