All my music is excellently tagged with as much information as possible. Except for the genre field. I don’t see the point; it seems too vague. Nonetheless, I would be interested to hear how people do it; how do you decide between Rock and Indie Rock (or Alternative Rock, or just Alternative, or Alternative Indie Post-Steampunk Rock)? Is it IDM or just Dance? What’s the difference between Europop, Synthpop, Power Pop, Dream Pop (my Chairlift album is tagged that, for some reason), and just plain Pop?
I’m a stickler for tagging all of my music, and definitely do the genre as there can be certain times when I just want to listen to Chillout, or Trance, or Black Metal, or whatever. It’s easy to just scroll on the iPod to that genre, or within MediaMonkey and click play.
I used to be fairly vague with my genres, and go with overarching titles like Alternative, Dance, Hip Hop and so forth, but as my music tastes have evolved and started to really delve into specific niches, I’ve become a little more nuanced with my genre-titling. Dance is now subdivided into all manner of things, and Chillout has sub-sections like Mellow Dance, Mellow Hip Hop, etc.
I’ve started splitting Hip Hop into East and West Coasts, as well as what I call Intelligent Hip Hop, which includes artists like Saul Williams, Talib Kweli and Mos Def. More poetry over a beat than outright Hip Hop, which I tend to still use for all of the gangsta and mainstream stuff.
Usually, it’s a gut feeling as to putting an entire album in a genre, based on an artist’s previous material and/or a quick listen through. But I constantly find myself editing and re-editing assigned genres, especially for tracks that I tagged 5+ years ago.
I think it’s a sign of OCD, and it’ll never be complete. Ever.
Yeah, I’m the same way, my iTunes is a work in progress. The only downside is that Genius doesn’t like these really specific sub-genres.
