I only have 44.

To be honest, I don't think it matters as long as you can easily find the music you want to listen to.

I like your idea of Elvis Costello etc. as a genre. EC is in my library under the default genres given at rip time, so variously under Pop / Rock / Alternative / Soundtrack / Classical etc.

Given the huge number of different artists he works with - each registering under a different artist name - that would seem to be the only sensible method of grouping his work into one easily findable chunk.

Not trying to go one better or anything, but I currently have 153 genres (bit tricky to count them on the iPod ...). Music is music, of course and we all profess to hate slapping labels on art but, well, descriptions are useful because they mean something to us.

I think we can start from the concensus that the 'standard issue' labels mean precisely nothing (what is 'Alternative & Punk', anyway?) The trouble is that there are so many musical dimensions to consider (date, country of origin, instrumentation, tempo, rythm, regional accent, etc., etc.) and any or all of these could change what we think of as the 'type of music'. It's really just a matter of perception and what is useful to us. For instance, if my music collection were 90% jazz (it isn't), I'd probably want to go to town on obscure sub-genres that probably wouldn't mean anything to the rest of us.

I'm all in favour of making genre descriptions up if they're useful. A couple of comments, though:

I don't use artists names as genre labels. Surely even great artists operate within the same traditions and vocabulary as everyone else? Surely also, the work of great artists will span a range of what we would normally think of as musical genres - would you put Elvis Costello singing Gershwin in the same genre as 'Armed Forces'? It just seems too much of an easy short cut to me.

The logical extension of this argument, however, is that genre descriptions lie with the individual track, not all the tracks in a given album - it's all about the music. This way madness lies. I've tried to label the tracks from a recently-acquired album - so far, I have 'Mariachi Pop', 'Accordion Waltz', 'Cabaret' and 'Baroque Pop" and there are some I don't know what to do with.

I think we should start a self-help group.

so I filed them under 'more trouble than they're worth'.

Seems like you guys have too much time on your hands!

How did you get here?
I'm off to an art exhibition. I expect to see your work on my desk when I return.

It would be nice to have an 'elegant solution' to the problem, but - and it pains me to admit this - I really don't think it's going to happen, because there's just too much cross-fertilisation going on.

Case in point; Run DMC's 'Walk This Way' Hip-hop or rock? Unless you want to fudge the issue and call it 'hip-hop/rock', you're pretty much stuffed. And if you do fudge it, then you will end up with almost as many genres as tracks.

I have a hard drive with nearly 10,000 tunes on it (and still much more to rip), and I have absolutely no desire to organise it thus. I will admit to having a couple of sections for 'mood genres', such as 'acoustic', but that's as far as it's ever going to go.

Work out what music you would actually select by genre and keep those correct, the rest can be any genre as you never search for them that way anyway.

For example: Jazz, instrumental and goth are the only genres I will select to listen to on random. It's nice to keep Siousxie, late period Leonard Cohen and The Cure together, but I don't need to keep The Rolling Stones, The Who and Cream together under the one label.

I refuse to do genres or ratings on iTunes. I mean, come on. You have to draw the line somewhere.

All music is jazz. But there's just different types of jazz - country jazz, hip hop jazz, folk jazz, prog jazz, reggae jazz, jazz jazz, etc.

I hope that helps.

(Both revivalist and old skool)

Surely you shouldn't create more than a dozen genres or that would defeat the purpose of such a category heading. E.g. Rock, Jazz, Reggae, Folk, Ethnic, Pre Rock n Roll, Electronica, Classical whatever you're having etc. . Anything more specific/varied is the domain of the playlist. And it should be assigned by track as opposed to by album/artist.
You don't need to create a genre relating to the time period- there's already a "year" category that can serve that purpose. :-)
(my wife would kill me if she knew how much time i have spent thinking about this in the last few months....oh dear)