The genre tag has been giving me some problems lately. I have some music that I can't really classify into any given genre. I'm not sure what type it should be classified. This led me to another train of thought.

Why do you use the genre tag? I guess from my point of view, music is music and doesn't necessarily need to be placed in a category. All of my music has a genre tag, but I don't even use it anymore really. My foobar configuration doesn't even display the genre tag anymore. The only reason I can see to use the genre tag anymore is to sort the music by genre. What are some other good uses for a genre tag? Does any program explicitly use them? (i.e. Winamp and it's auto EQ)

I guess it's a preference really. I'm considering just using masstagger to remove all of my genre tags as I don't use them anymore. Just curious if anyone else uses genre tags for anything else.

I use it to sort by what kind of music i feel like listening to... in auto-playlists typically.

I agree it is quite difficult to categorize artists artificially like that, but it IS useful if done right.

ID3v1 genres are rediculous, one reason i don't use those tags at all. I use custom ID3v2 genres that make sense to me... examples:

post-punk
proto-punk
synth pop
Britpop
Noise pop
Alt country
industrial dance
industrial metal
etc...

then some catch-all categories:

alternative rock (really very few albums fit in this traditionally broad category... smashing pumpkins and jane's addiction are the only ones I have despite my huge 90s collection).

experimental rock (stuff that doesn't fit well anywhere... Beck, David Bowie, Lou Reed, Tom Waits)

I'm in the same boat as you, Zoom, but I never use the genre tag. Oftentimes the tag that comes on mp3 files I get from elsewhere (or that is associated with a cd in freedb) is a classification I disagree with, anyway. I know some people sort their music by genre, and it could be useful to have an "evening listening" folder of music, for example, but I've never seen much of a use for the genre tag. Jebus offers some good suggestions, and much more relevant categories than id3v1, but for me, I know how I classify music and usually listen to a certain artist, not a certain style. I'd say delete them using masstagger, but there may be good reasons for you to keep the tags, see what other people say. Jebus, do you actually use the genre tags in any functional fashion, or is it just so you can feel good about having stuff labeled with categories that make sense?

edit: added question for Jebus

I use the genre tags along the same line as Jebus. I use it purely for dividing my music collection into sections based on my own personal grouping so that I can later play one "genre" of music I feel all fit well together. The actual name of the genre is really kind of arbitrary but I try to use a common genre name that mostly fits the group of artists I include.

I didn't have a lot of use for Genre either but now I have an ipod shuffle and you have to use ITUNES which isn't so bad.. you can pick a genre and it will show you only that genre which is useful..

However, I was just going to ask this as my first post today.. does anyone have a good method (program) to use to set a whole folder of albums to a certain genre? I already have my albums grouped for the most part (classic rock, punk, country) but it would be nice if I could just set all the tags to match.

I use the genre tag because the great majority of bands play similar in some way. If you some band's guitar style, distortion for example, and dont know a definition just to start looking for others, it gets complicated. So the genre tag is there to help, at least giving some direction, not meaning its the only way.


Foobar does it for you, masstager function. Pretty good.

tag&Rename will also let you tag whole directory trees at once.

No time to get complicated with genres. That equals less time for listening. I keep labelling music as raw as possible, just basing off the emotional intent behind it. If you wanna get nit-picky then there's no end to it. You'll end up having to classify each song individually since so many albums have something outside the norm for that artist. Not every record can be like Slayer...

For me if it's loud or fast or loud and fast then it's Rock&Roll. No vocals and electronic beats to get your feet moving is Techno. Industrial, Classical, Opera, Blues, Jazz, Soul, Folk, Funk, Country, Reggae, and Rap will take care of most of it. And luckily there's Pop for everything else that is famous for reasons besides just the music. I might use Disco or Polka only the occasion has never arrived...

Personally, I have little use for genre tags, but I do tend to add at least a fairly general classification to my music - Rock, Country, Electronic/Dance/Techno (That one depends on the mood I'm in, more than the artist, but I favor them in that order). Rap, and occasionally R&B, or Urban to be very general.

If I want to listen to music that is of a certain style, or mood, I think of an artist, and I don't search for a genre.

I am a DJ, however, and that scenario is very different. For music in my DJ collection, it is very handy to be able to search for music of a certain type. Rap, Classic Rock, Alt. Rock, Punk Rock, R&B, Fast Dance, Slow Dance, Adult Contemporary, Urban Fast, Urban Slow, Calypso, Reggae, etc. etc.

I have these compilation CDs where it is important for every song to have *some* kind of classification. Often a song won't fit into one easily, so I might name it something like Dance/Latin Fast or otherwise use multiple genres with the "/". For my very general scheme for my personal music, ID3v1 is sufficent (not that it doesn't suck though), but for my DJ collection, it is woefully inadequate.

I think this is the best and most important use for ID3 tags - for DJs to quickly find music for a set of a particular style. If I want 1980's era dance/club music, I just search for something like "198 dance" in the foobar database search, while searching the date and genre tags. It works like a charm. Some of these compilations I have have databases available on the internet, and you can use the foobar masstagger to transfer the genre information from a spreadsheet to foobar's database very easily.

I guess I hadn't thought of something like that. Broadcasting or DJ'ing would be made easier by the use of genre tags. Still for my own personal tastes, I think I'll remove the tags. Although the custom made genres does sound like a good idea...

BUMP!

To prevent genre confusion, I use the field for more definite qualifiers such as "Cover", "Arrangement", "Movie", "Game", or "Paraody". Quite convenient, really, especially given that most music rarely sticks to a single genre.

I don't care about id3-genre-specs at all and just enter whatever fits. However, since most of my music does not fit into a single genre, i use multiple genre fields, and that way say "it has a bit of this, and a bit of that"....... the most obvious influence comes as the first field, the least influential as the last. No need to introduce more weird custom fieldnames.

That way, i can use DB-functions in fb2k to search for music with "keywords".

And since the genre-tag is the most widely supported "musicstyle"-tag, its compatible with every formatting-string which uses the genre-field.

- Lyx

Same as Jebus and Rotator: I define my own genres that make sense to me, then it's easy to listen to whatever "genre" I'm in the mood for. Then when you shuffle within a genre it's a little like listening to your own radio show. The hardest part is coming up with your own classification system because it takes a bit of time especially if you have a large collection and some unique music. It'll never be perfect, but I'm finally satisfied enough with mine. So yes Timcupery, I think this is useful and not just an exercise in classification.

Unfortunately I already got rid of all my ID3v2 tags and replaced them with APEv2 (foobar2k). But that really only affects my Neuros portable, and the best news for me is that the Sorune dev just implemented APE tag support!