it's all music. Simple.

But if you have 1000s of songs and want to find something or play a mix of similar artists... they're useful

The simplest way is not to overcomplicate things, sticking to a simple one genre per album. Unless its a compilation, then each has to be different.

I tend to recategorise anything that iTunes claims is "Alternative & Punk".
Though things that are really hard to classify stay as Alternative, such as Psapp or Bjork. They are the other form of music yet to be described.

Sigur Ros join the Post Rock section.
Wire join the Post Punk section.
The Sex Pistols join the Punk section.

And World music covers everything from the rest of the World, in my opinion, so I have a big span from Mariza to Ali Farka Toure to Buena Vista Social Club.

And Soundtracks cover Soundtracks.

It's a system that works for me anyway.

(And for the Dylan conundrum... pre-Highway 61 = folk, after that, usually classed as Americana or Country, depending on how twangy the guitar is....)

Hope that helps.

I think it largely depends upon how you use the genres. I never use use shuffle on my ipod and never use genres but if I have several smart playlists set up to stream straight from my server to my hi-fi. For smart playlists, the more relevant genres that you attach to each track, the better. For example, I have a Motown smart list so I need to have both soul and Motown included in the tags for a lot of tracks.

I hoover stuff up into iTunes and then on to the iPod and don't always remember to check the genre when I do, so I have to go back and sort out into the main clusters - any kind of jazz (jazz/funk) I reset to jazz, any kind of hip-hop/rap I reset to hip-hop, any kind of punk I reset to punk, etc.

I do use the genres on shuffle - I've got a playlist for all the jazz so that when I want to hear some jazz but don't mind if it's Dexter Gordon, Thelonious Monk or The Lounge Lizards I can riffle though it and find some that suits my mood.

I just checked - 136 Genres, so I need to do some consolidation again!

Genre-tidying is a mug's game. I know this because I am that mug. A big part of me agrees with Patrick - one genre, "Music", is all you need.

Doesn't stop me though. 90 Genres currently. The only consistent feature is my inconsistency.

It breaks down like this.

A few 'all encompassing' genres - Jazz, Classical, Country.

The 'big' genres broken down into sub-genres. So we have Southern Rock, Progressive Rock, Pub Rock etc. Soul broken down into Tamla, Atlantic/Stax, Northern etc

Some 'specialist' genres - eg Rootsy Stuff, Intelligent US Rock, Tattoo'd American Boys.

Some cities - Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield get their own Genres.

And the really big artists get their very own genres - either to collect group/solo recordings ('Beatles' includes the Fabs collectively and solo, plus covers) or because the artist straddles too many genres (eg Dylan, Elvis Costello, Neil Young).

You're right. It's a bugger's muddle. But it sort of works for me.

this is just what I wanted

and Electronica/Dance covers it all. Tho' as stated, the buggers are the genre hopping artists, come in Costello, O'Connor, Morrison, M, Dylan and the like. It is soooo irritating! I mean, the Ramones never saw the need to do a country album followed byy a jazz album, did they?

set by who ever enters the info first, as far as I can tell - anyone know different? I'm sure I've entered the info for at least one Word CD, for example.

As for genres, I use two main ones - 'Rock' for anything with a guitar and 'Dance' for anything 'electronic'. I use 'classical', 'folk', 'country' and 'children's music' for the rest - I find that these are much easier to categorise. Oh, and I have a 'live' genre for bootlegs.

SO just 8 categories - do I win a prize?

Work out what genres you will actually use for shuffle and pay attention to those. The other genres don't matter and can be as messy as you want.

Also simplify all the genres so you don't end up with five different names for jazz.

All my music falls into the following genres:

Rock
Pop
Dance
Industrial
Heavy Metal
Hard Rock
Folk-Rock
Progressive Rock
Prog-Metal
Jazz
Soul
Singer-Songwriter

Truth be told I could probably cut it all down to:

Rock
Pop
Heavy Metal
Folk-Rock
Progressive Rock
Jazz
Singer-Songwriter

I'm on 34 genres, 2 of which "Porn Groove" and "Tadpole-Thump" are new forms of music yet to be discovered me and my friend Harry have invented.

Not too bad out of 140Gb....

had them catagorised as "limey wanker c***s with bad teeth"

Never come across that one before or since

but tags on Last FM where a friend uses 'God Like Genius' & 'The Bollocks' among others to define his music...

...says it all really. 'AWAITING CLASSIFICATION' is for stuff I haven't listened to yet and stuff I have but can't quite decide what it is.
At the risk of opening another can of worms, does anyone else use the 'Grouping' category in iTunes? You can use this as an additional way of tagging tracks. For example, I have a tag 'LI' short for LIVE, which means I can generate a Smart playlist of live tracks which incorporates all genres. I also tag INstrumentals, as I find these less distracting when working. 'WH' is for WHISTLING...

For the purpose of driving playlists I use Keywords or two letter codes in the Grouping field. such as
CV - Cover
GG - Girl group
MT - Motown
etc.
More flexible as, for instance, I want the Supremes in Girl Group and Motown, and if the track is one of their Beatles covers (assuming I can bear it at all) I want it also to be noted as a cover version.
Do have to keep a note of the codes though to avoid those headscratching moments.

PS started this, went away and came back hour later to finish so had missed seeing your post, paulyj, till after. As you can see I use Grouping much the same way as you do.