iTunes or MP3 file questions.

[black roadster]

I'm trying to better organize my MP3 collection. I'm using iTunes.

My questions are regarding music genres.

iTunes has about 50 different genres to choose from and I'm confused on what is the best plan to organize my music. Currently I have the same band under different genres or no genre at all. I also currently have 94 genres of music and want to slim it down.

How do you determine what is the appropriate genre for each artist? I mean what is the difference between Alternative Rock, Rock, RockNRoll, Rock & Roll, Rock/Pop, Indie Rock, etc.?

For that matter what about Electronic, Electronica, Electronica & Dance, Techno, Trance, or Ska, Punk, Rave, Industrial...

Too many similar selections. I don't even know what some of these choices mean.

I miss the days of Rock, Pop, Alternative, Classic Rock, Disco where all the lines were easily defined.

[sammm]

I don't use Genre. You can remove it from your 'sort by' columns in iTunes.

[srivendel]

What is the purpose of assigning genre labels? I have close to 19,000 songs in my collection and the genre tags are whatever iTunes assigns them when I rip the CD. But that doesn't matter to me because I never say "Hey, I want to listen to some electronica, let me sort my files by genre." In other words, the tags serve no purpose for me.

What purpose will they serve for you? Answer that question and you will get closer to figuring out how to approach the project.

S.

[black roadster]

What is the purpose of assigning genre labels? I have close to 19,000 songs in my collection and the genre tags are whatever iTunes assigns them when I rip the CD. But that doesn't matter to me because I never say "Hey, I want to listen to some electronica, let me sort my files by genre." In other words, the tags serve no purpose for me.

What purpose will they serve for you? Answer that question and you will get closer to figuring out how to approach the project.

S.

I find myself thinking, "Hey, I want to listen to some electronica, let me sort my files by genre."

Seriously. My music collection is pretty diverse. Techno to Big Band and Country to Punk. Mostly, I'll shuffle all but sometimes I just want to listen to some Rock or whatever.

[Majik]

Make playlists with the songs you might want to listen to at any one time. That is what I do. I have a few playlists that fit my usual tastes. Then I just shuffle the individual lists.

[CraiginTX]

I find myself thinking, "Hey, I want to listen to some electronica, let me sort my files by genre."

Seriously. My music collection is pretty diverse. Techno to Big Band and Country to Punk. Mostly, I'll shuffle all but sometimes I just want to listen to some Rock or whatever.

MoodLogic is your friend - as long as you're not running a Mac and don't have your collection stored in AAC format. I've used it a little, and I found it to be very cool. Wish I could run it.

[srivendel]

I find myself thinking, "Hey, I want to listen to some electronica, let me sort my files by genre."

Seriously. My music collection is pretty diverse. Techno to Big Band and Country to Punk. Mostly, I'll shuffle all but sometimes I just want to listen to some Rock or whatever.

What can I say? Sounds like our collections are both quite diverse, I just listen to my music differently. I think you can maybe get it down to a dozen genres or so, but at some point you're just making sh*t up.

I could probably narrow mine to:

Alt country
Folk/bluegrass
Blues
Rock
Pop
Alternative
Metal
Electronica
Dance
DJ
R&B
Hip hop
Jazz
Classical

I could splinter those into a bazillion sub-categories, but at some point you're just guessing, like differentiating clearly between house, trance, IDM, big beat, electro, dub, etc.

Usually if I'm in the mood for something really specific it means I'm in the mood for a specific artist. And, as Majik said, I make playlists for the stuff that sounds good together but isn't in the same genre.

S.

[srivendel]

MoodLogic is your friend - as long as you're not running a Mac and don't have your collection stored in AAC format. I've used it a little, and I found it to be very cool. Wish I could run it.

Their website boasts something about "new" iPod compatibility, but it's very vague. All my stuff is in AAC.

S.

[Majik]

Their website boasts something about "new" iPod compatibility, but it's very vague. All my stuff is in AAC.

S.

You can pull the DRM off of your music if you want. That will allow you to play it as a MPeg 4 I believe.

[Magma]

MoodLogic is your friend - as long as you're not running a Mac DOH and don't have your collection stored in AAC format. DAMN

Oh Well

[Nexus Flux]

BR here is the app I was telling you about.

The Godfather

And don't worry it's freeware

[trickyrix]

You know... no music collection is complete without a few "hits you remember" from the Singer of Songs...

[icepenguin66]

I could splinter those into a bazillion sub-categories, but at some point you're just guessing, like differentiating clearly between house, trance, IDM, big beat, electro, dub, etc.

Usually if I'm in the mood for something really specific it means I'm in the mood for a specific artist. And, as Majik said, I make playlists for the stuff that sounds good together but isn't in the same genre.

S.

I would have to agree with them. Just create a bunch of playlists for certian groupings of music.

For example, I have a playlist group for Trance, which includes subfolders for trance, psy-trance, progressive trance/house, ambient trance, old tech/trance. In one of the trance folders I have trance, vocal trance, progressive trance, psy-trance, ambient-trance and a few house and progressive house tunes! It would be a PITA to organize and/or sort by genre, not to mention having to enter the genre or correct the autofill entry.

For Rock & Roll, I just created a playlist for rock, one for oldies, one for classic rock and one for soft rock. Some songs and artists are in more than one of those playlists, just depends on the song. Some songs can fit into several genres, especially with EDM (electronic dance musik).

Just my

[Miatamaniac92]

I use www.mediamonkey.com

It is awesome. I have used it to clean up my Mp3 collection. I only have 5,000 at about 30 Gigs. I narrowed down my Genre list to only about 20, with 6 being the main ones. Mediamonkey also has a handy feature to look up the album and autocode and download the album art from Amazon. You can also autocode based on file name/path, or organize your MP3's into a certain path based on the tags.



I'm not a big fan of the iPod or iTunes. I have a Creative Zen: Micro I just got in November. Working out sure isn't the same with out it!

Chris

[onething]

I've found one system that works really well for me. I use the buttons on my radio to change genre

[black roadster]

I've found one system that works really well for me. I use the buttons on my radio to change genre

[onething]

Well, yeah, it works on my table model radio too