Genre Tagging Schemes and Philosophies

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by beatmichael, Jun 2, 2013.

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  1. beatmichael

    beatmichael Forum Resident Thread Starter

    This is really only of interest for those of us who maintain a sizable digital library.

    I'm having a bit of a crisis and I need some suggestions on how to resolve it. I want to know how you tag your library.

    Currently mine is a bit of a mess. I'm not sure if I want to go really minimal and use as few genre's as possible or really get specific and go all out. Right now, I'm kind of in-between.

    For example, for 1960's era British Invasion stuff I've been tagging them: '60's Beat and then getting more specific as needed ie: ['60's Beat; Mod], ['60's Beat; British Blues], ['60's Beat; British Blues; Rock; Psychedelic Rock] etc...

    One problem with this is that I haven't been very consistent and also what do I do with a band (the Who, Stones, Kinks etc...) who have done albums in different genre's and decades? I don't really like the idea of having, say, the Stones have 10 or more different genre tags.

    I like to make quick, random playlists and defining by genre is a good way to do that but if you get really super anal about it, it seems like one would spend a lot of time defining a criteria to make a quick random playlist and that kind of defeats the purpose.

    Anyway....

    How do YOU do it?
     
  2. Too much modern music defies easy categorization. The only categories that make sense to my collection are these three: Classical, Rap, Rock/Pop (a catch-all category for everything that doesn't fit the first two).
     
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  3. Chevelleman

    Chevelleman Well-Known Member

    Location:
    NH
    I'm as minimal as possible when genre tagging since I really don't use the genre tag for anything other than just to have the option to search for music by genre "which I probably will never do". My most popular tags are, Rock, Pop, Soul, R&B, Pop-Rock, Blues-Rock, Folk-Rock, Prog-Rock, Prog-Metal, Metal, Krautrock, Comedy, NewWave, Alternative, pretty much the only genre's I like!
     
  4. bRETT

    bRETT Senior Member

    Location:
    Boston MA
    I added a lot of genres to the ITunes list. For starters, my three favorite kinds of music-- garage, prog rock, and funk-- didn't have tags of their own., now they do.
     
  5. mwheelerk

    mwheelerk Sorry, I can't talk now, I'm listening to music...

    Location:
    Gilbert Arizona
    I think of mine as being a genre minimalist but I do have 17 different categories.
     
  6. rxcory

    rxcory proud jazz band/marching band parent

    Location:
    Portland, Oregon
    +1
    +1
    I used to spend a some time on this but soon realized it didn't matter to me. Indeed, a lot of the music I have does not easily fit into a single category. And I never sort or search by genre. Plus I have too much music constantly coming in and out of my collection to worry about such things.
     
  7. Tim S

    Tim S Senior Member

    Location:
    East Tennessee
    I just invented some genre names that made sense to me and that I knew I would like to make playlists based on.
     
    petem1966 and stereoptic like this.
  8. xj32

    xj32 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Racine, WI
    I thought I was minimal...until I looked and saw that I have 23 genres in iTunes.

    On the simple side for me, all Rock is Rock, I dont care if its 60's, 70's, grunge, metal or whatever, its all rock. I treat R&B, Jazz, Country, Classical, Reggae and such all the same. I dont need to worry about 60's rock, 80's rock because I use smart playlists to filter by genre and year of original release. I have been putting all of my electronic and new age under Ambient, but will possibly change that to Electronic.

    Where I deviate is live music, I have a Rock-Live, R&B-Live, Jazz-Live and Country-Live for all of my oficial live albums.

    And then I do have a category labeled Bootleg that is pretty self explanatory.

    XJ
     
  9. mwheelerk

    mwheelerk Sorry, I can't talk now, I'm listening to music...

    Location:
    Gilbert Arizona
    Though I have kept my tagging pretty consistent and complete I occassionally wish I had expanded the information somewhat specifically as it relates to the source of the file. Though I identify audiophile masterings and purchased high resolution downloads as such in the Comments area for most of the other albums I have simply identified that as Original or Remaster CD. I wish I might have been more thorough in that tagging so that if they might be a 'special' original (RCA Bowie, Target CDs, original Japanese release etc) I would have indicated it as such. Going back seems a little daunting. Additionally I have always identified the year with the original year of release so that if an album came out in 1969 that is the Year tag it received whether it was the Original release or Remaster CD (that includes audiophile and HD Tracks type releases). If the remaster CD included bonus tracks it was still identified with the Original release year date. However if there was a bonus CD included (DeluxeEdition/Legacy Edition etc) then that 'bonus' CD is tagged with its date of original release (so the main album might show the year as 1977 and the bonus disc as 2003). The one thing I would do different here is on any remaster CD I would include in Comments the release date of the remaster along with keeping the original release date in the year tag.

    Maybe someday I will have the motivation to make those changes if it seems important enough but for now good enough is working fine.
     
  10. kwf

    kwf Forum Resident

    Location:
    Rock City
    I try to keep it tight as possible. I used to make up a few genres such as "Purple" to collect all of DP, Rainbow and the rest of the family tree under one umbrella. Did the same with "Led Zep" to collect the Zep, JP, RP P&P, The Firm, etc...Now I use the "Album Artist" tag for that function and just label the genre Hard Rock...

    What genre do folks tag Frank Zappa material? I use Avante Garde...
     
  11. beatmichael

    beatmichael Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Thanks for your input so far.

    I decided to keep mine a little more specific. I figured out that my media player (Media Monkey) allows an artist to appear in multiple genres if it's formatted correctly. That is very helpful and pretty much solves my problem.

    Tagging the live albums is a good idea. Hadn't thought of that before.
     
  12. ceddy10165

    ceddy10165 My life was saved by rock n roll

    Location:
    Avon, CT
    Interesting thread. I'm constantly refining, and think that I finally have it down. I hope at least, cuz it gets to be a tedious pain, and I'm not sure I have much more energy for it.

    When I began about 8 years ago I was very granular and specific, and as I update and backup my library I get more and more general with the artist and genre, so that files are easier to dearchive. For example, before "The Beatles", "John Lennon", "Paul McCartney" each had their own folder, and now the artist tag is all "The Beatles", with the artist being notated before the album - for example "George Harrison: All Things Must Pass." Genre is less important to me, and for example, "Hard Rock" covers everything from Sabbath to Slayer to Motley Crue to Alice Cooper to Electric Wizard. For "albums" I list the release or recording date as the first thing in the album field so albums are sorted by date.

    I listen to records as entities, and usually have phases where I'll pull an artist's whole catalog. I don't really do playlists, etc. so I guess Genre has never been that crucial to me.

    I collect and record live shows and never tag files as (live). I only tag the album field with a recording source if it's a field recording - i.e Gary Louris 20130602 [AUD Sony ECM-717) Iron Horse Music Hall; Northampton, MA.

    I also keep both ALAC and AAC versions of many albums and tag the album field with "AAC" so that a portable lower res version is stored in its own folder and sortable for home or mobile use.
     
  13. ceddy10165

    ceddy10165 My life was saved by rock n roll

    Location:
    Avon, CT
    He falls under "Prog Rock" in my library. I'd rather hear him along side King Crimson than Ornette Coleman or Varese.
     
  14. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    Then, where will you put his Varese album if it ever gets released...? :idea:




    Now playing on Ariel Stream: Dave Koz - Emily
     
  15. ceddy10165

    ceddy10165 My life was saved by rock n roll

    Location:
    Avon, CT
    Touche. That's a dilemma I'll be happy to deal with when the day comes. It's an imperfect science for sure.
     
  16. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    The day has already come. His Francesco Zappa album is a synclavier recording of the classical music of one of his ancestors.




    Now playing on Ariel Stream: Abyssinia Infinite - Aba Alem Lemenae
     
  17. WolfSpear

    WolfSpear Music Enthusiast

    Location:
    Florida
    I'm pretty generic... I just label anything that's rock as "rock".

    Maybe once or twice I'll stray and add "Psychedelic" or "Progressive".
     
  18. Rodney Toady

    Rodney Toady Waste of cyberspace

    Location:
    Finland
    I've decided to skip genre tagging altogether - most of the categories I can imagine are far too vague, and a great deal of artists in my collection are borderline cases anyway.
     
  19. Damien DiAngelo

    Damien DiAngelo Forum Resident

    Location:
    Michigan, USA
    I always try to keep it minimal.
    Rock
    Prog
    Pop
    Country
    Punk
    R&B
    Funk
    Indie
    That's about it for me, when I'm doing the labelling. My CD ripper program will fill in genres from the CDDB database. I'll leave it alone unless it's obviously wrong.
     
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  20. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I'm with Damien above: making it more complicated than it needs to be takes all the fun out of it.

    I use only the following for CDs:

    Rock Vocal
    Rock Inst.
    Rock Vocal/Inst.
    Rock/Pop Vocal
    Rock/Soul Vocal
    Rock/Country Vocal
    Rock/Pop Inst.
    Rock/R&B Vocal
    Pop Vocal
    Pop Inst.
    Pop Vocal/Inst.
    Pop/Soul Vocal
    Pop/R&B Vocal
    Pop/Dance Vocal
    Soul Vocal
    Soul Inst.
    Soul/Pop Vocal
    Soul/Dance Vocal
    R&B Vocal
    R&B/Soul Vocal
    Doo-Wop
    Blues Vocal
    Film Soundtrack
    Film Score
    TV Soundtrack
    TV Score
    Broadway Cast
    Classical
    Country Vocal
    Country Inst.
    Country/Pop
    Folk
    Folk/Rock
    Jazz Vocal
    Jazz Inst.
    Jazz Vocal/Inst.
    Disco Vocal
    Disco Inst.
    Dance Vocal
    Dance Inst.
    Rap
    Hip-Hop
    Rap/Hip-Hop
    Comedy
    Novelty
    Spoken Word
    Christmas
    Sound FX
    Broadcast
    Children
    Gospel
    Misc.

    All that is in a value list in the database that I created almost 20 years ago, so I just tab into the field, hit the first letter or two, and bang, it's done. Goes very quickly. 90% of what I have is either Rock Vocal or Pop Vocal, so the rest aren't used too frequently.
     
  21. stereoptic

    stereoptic Anaglyphic GORT Staff

    Location:
    NY
    I really need to go through my catalog and tweak it. When I initially started ripping I didn't put much effort into the genre tag. Now I am trying to backtrack and update the null ones. One of the first ones that I did was make sure that all of the Christmas songs are tagged "Christmas"! With the Squeezebox I can randomize and select which genres to exclude. For songs that are available in mon and stereo I use a genre "mono" for the mono ones. For the "World Music" tunes, I double tag them "World Music;Brazillian";"World Music;Hawaiian". .I don't consider Reggae World Music Similar for Blues, I use "Blues;Delta Blues","Blues;Jump Blues","Blues;New Orleans Rhythm and Blues", etc.
     
  22. Turnaround

    Turnaround Senior Member

    Location:
    -
    I think I have posted threads about this in the past, when (like the OP) my digital library grew huge and I encountered problems with genre tagging.

    I decided to go minimal with genre tagging.

    First, with all the maintenance to organize a large music collection, genre tagging became another chore on top of everything else.

    Second, when I tried to subdivide my physical collection by genres, I realized how confusing it got. Classical, Jazz, Rock are simple enough. But to divide Rock into Metal, Blues, Rap, Soul, R&B, Pop, Alternative Rock, Classic Rock ... I couldn't find anything anymore. Organization became something I was doing for the sake of organizing. It was not helping me find what I wanted any better.

    Third, I realized that the only times I use genre to sort is on my portable device, which holds a smaller library than my full library, so subdividing too finely is overkill.
     
  23. kwf

    kwf Forum Resident

    Location:
    Rock City
    For compilations I follow this scheme... Artist: Have A Nice Day, Album: Super Hits Of The 70's Vol. 1, Track: More Today Than Yesterday-Spiral Staircase ...The file is named "01 More Today Than Yesterday"
     
  24. Anchorless

    Anchorless Active Member

    Location:
    Boise, Idaho
    Minimal for me too

    I have:
    Rock (mostly classic rock, 60's, 70's, radio rock, pop rock, etc.)
    Blues
    Classical
    County
    Folk (this is a tough one, because there is a lot of cross over here)
    Indie (a huge catch all for stuff that doesn't fit well in any one genre... mostly contemporary stuff)
    Alternative (late 80's to mid 90's stuff, grunge, etc.)
    Alternative & Punk (a tag I don't particularly like but was used in my iTunes days... a kind of catchall for stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else)
    Punk Rock (self explanatory, includes hardcore)
    Metal (self explanatory, but mostly all metal goes here)
    Drone (I should probably remove this one)
    Post Rock (mostly instrumental, soundscapey stuff... EITS, Sigur Ros, Jesu, Mogwai, etc.)
    Hip Hop / Rap (self explanatory)
    Electronica (anything dancey, electronic, techno, etc. - I think I might have like 4 albums in this genre)
    Experimental (another catch-all for anything ambient, edgy, etc.)
    Pop
    Soundtrack
    Local (all local bands go here)

    Not the best, but it works.
     
  25. dat56

    dat56 Well-Known Member

    Location:
    SW Missouri
    This a fascinating, bedeviling subject! I'm more or less in the same boat with the OP, in that I can't really settle on minimal or maximal, so I'm kind of in the middle, but constantly being pulled one way or the other.

    First of all, I decide whether to apply genre tags by artist, album, or song. Then the issue of actually assigning genre comes up, which is sometimes very difficult, but I do think I may be zeroing in on a simple, consistent method that works for me. After making the decision about what level I will be applying the genre tag, I think about how I will use it. I like to boil things down to their essence, as that seems to help me wrap my little brain around complicated issues, so here, I look at it this way: What songs do I want to hear together in the same listening session? To figure that out, instead of looking at the song and trying to designate a genre tag, I find it much easier to simply group albums or artists together on a list, without even thinking about what genre they fit. Just decide which albums in your collection fit together, and then when done, you can give the lists whatever names make sense to you.

    The above is my current darling. The truth is I'm deep into the S's with my own tagging project, but just recently fine-tuned my "system" to the above state. So I'm a little too far along to stop and start over. Previously, I have just tried to settle on a set number of genres that would catch everything, and apply those as I alphabetically worked through my collection. I first tried seven, but eventually upped it to ten. But at some point, I intend to apply the method above. It's workable before the process actually starts, or at any point during or after. In fact, it may be easiest to do it after the fact. Just scan the ripped collection into mp3tag and then go through putting tracks together as best they fit, then give'm a name.

    The tags I have used so far are classical, jazz, Christmas, gospel, pop, rock, country, folk, R&B, and vocal. But the important thing to keep in mind, I think, is that genre tags are just words. They don't have to be literally correct. As long as you achieve your goal of grouping music together that sounds good together.
     
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