Entertainment For Lively Minds
What Genre's That Then?
I’ve just discoivered that I can sort my iPod’s contents by genre. Am I hopelessly behind the times in realising this?
Anyway, I thought it might be interesting to see who comes up as what genre (Word and BBC podcasts aside).
Alternative:
The Felice Brothers
Alternative and Punk:
Dodgy, Gin Blossoms, Glasvegas, Little Jackie, Maria McKee, Teddy Thompson
Blues:
Imelda May, Juluka
Country:
Flying Burrito Brothers, Hazeldine, Neal Casal
Dance:
M+M
Folk:
Crosby, Stills and Nash
Metal:
System of a Down
Other:
Blof feat. Counting Crows, Juluka
Pop:
Boy Least Likely To, The Dream Academy, England Dan & John Ford Coley, Katrina & The Waves, Kiki Dee, LGT, Lone Justice, Martha & The Muffins, Supertramp, T Rex, Tim Finn, Vanessa Carlton
Rock:
Bruce Springsteen, Colin Hay, Counting Crows, Dodgy, Gin Blossoms, Journey, Liverpool Collective, Lone Justice, Love, Magnum, The Pretenders, Steve Earle, Supertramp
Rock & Roll:
Steve Gibbons Band
Rock/Pop:
Grant Lee Buffalo, Ryan Adams
Soundtrack:
Superfine
Unclassifiable:
The Damned, Get Well Soon, Kingsize Five, Little Feat, Mary Coughlan, Shortwave Set
World:
Peatbog Faeries
So Counting Crows are “rock” but add Dutch lyrics and they become “other”? South African Zulu-rockers Juluka are either “other” (which I can see) or “blues” (which I can’t). Liverpool Collective (Fields of Anfield Road - probably the only true folk music in the whole collection) are “rock”?
All in all I think the only one I really agree with is that Get Well Soon are “unclassifiable”.
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You're in control
Surely you control the genres that you store your music under so if you don't agree with what's been automatically allocated either by a download website or by an online database like Freedb or gracenote you change it.
Yep
I've rationalised my genres down to about 15.
They're unquestionably arbitrary in places, probably unfathomable to anyone but me in others but they make it easy to find what I'm after, which is, after all, the point.
Hmmm
but it's a bit of a pain entering data into iTunes.
So am I missing something? What use are genres in the ipod context?
The same as any other metadata
It makes it easier to find or manage something; if you know you fancy a bit of world music but aren't sure what, it's easier to seach it if you can see all of that genre at once.
They're just another search criteria
so for example, if you wanted to create a smartlist you could set the parameters to be
Added after 1Jan2009
Year of release is later than 2005
Genre is Nosebleedingindustrialgrindcorejazzfusion
and the list gets created with say, 50 tracks in it.
As time goes by, and you add another album from 2006 that has that genre ascribed to it, by either yourself or an online DB, it automatically gets added to the list.
It's as useful as you think it'll be for you. I'm still mainly going with finding artists by Album and letting rip!
Try something else then!
I always try and sort out most of my MP3 Tags using MP3Tag before I tell iTunes it exists it has lots more tools available and it's just far easier to do a load of changes at the same time.
You could rename Dodgy
as Undiscussable
I could
But they're on a Cornbury this year so I thought I listen to a bit before we go.
Dodgy
It'll be worth it if they do 'Jack the Lad' - but then, by all means, you can go and buy yourself a large ale and take your time appreciating it.
Oh do behave!
Dodgy were and always will be ace. As long as Math doesn't get a call up for Nevermind the Buzzcocks again they can't go wrong. Saw them last year in the pouring rain and it was 45 mins of blissfull summer melodies and 3 part harmonies.. Bostin'.
When MP3 tagging first appeared.
When tagging of MP3 files first appeared in late late 1990s, there were only 80 pre-defined genres to choose from, chosen by the twerp of a programmer responsible for designing the tagging system.
Available genres included the following bizarre ones:Pranks, Space, Darkwave, Euro-Techno, Dream, Native Ameircan, Acid Punk, Bass and Christian Rap, but missed out fairly common genres such as Folk, Bluegrass and Opera. The specification made it impossible to use anything else in the genre field/
If a CD track details were submitted to CDDB against the original MP3 standard you will be limited to their list of 80 genres.
I usually set my genres to blank, with the exception of Classical and Jazz, as they're usually wrong.
errr...wasn't there another one called
'porn groove'
I mean, i've heard there was another one called that...
Porn Groove.
That was one of the 40 or more extra genres that WinAmp included, when they expanded the choices to include many of the originally missing genres. There were also other strange ones such as Primus and Booty Bass.
Possibly the most obscure practical joke I've come across ...
... was when I downloaded a Nurse With Wound compilation into iTunes and the genre came up as "easy listening".
About 2 seconds into the first track reveals it's anything but.
E music downloads are the worst
Virtually any irish folkie comes up as reggae. And I don't mean Damien Dempsey, who can be. A bit, if you imagine Bob Marley riding a horse bareback thru' the downside of Dublin.
English folk
all comes up as "Country".
Well....
If they provide files with ID3 v1 tags then they're stuck with the pre-defined list of 80 genres, which doesn't include folk. ID3 v2 tags appeared a long time ago, but there's still some equipment and software that can't handle them, and so some services may still revert to the older spec.
The moral is to never get programmers to design specifications that will be used in the real world by non-programmers. I speak here from experience.
Emusic has no excuse
Emusic tags with ID3v1 & ID3v2.3 so there's no excuse. Their tagging is a bit haphazzard, some tracks have embedded artwork and some don't - I make sure that everything I download goes straight into MP3Tag for a bit of consistency - I also like to use ID3v2.3 ISO-8859 so that my car stereo can see them - it's a common problem with car stereos apparently.
Genre entries are a waste of time.
unless they mean something to you in practical terms. I'm happiest with blanks for digital tracks too.
In the terrestrial world, HMV now have a catch-all category in their stores along the lines of "Special Interest Music". A lot of artists reviewed in the Word seem to end up there, if stocked at all.