Genre Standards & Cleaning

[AnalogKid]

Hi, the genre tag in my collection is something I'd like to use more, but its quality is inconsistent and often wrong.

I am looking for:

1. Standardized Genre Values: As an alternative to my coming up with my own standardized genre values, I am looking for one that might exist somewhere to use. Something more sophisticated than "Rock", "Jazz", etc. For example, "Rock - Punk", "Jazz - Bebop", etc. I realize there is an enormous amount of subjectivity, but sites like AllMusic have done this....

2. Ability to "automagically" retag all my music based on an Artists' applicable genre (I realize that some artists will switch back and forth, but I'm willing to be flexible

Any ideas or thoughts are most appreciated!!

John

[magister]

One place to start is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_music_styles.

I think, however, that you will be better off in the end creating a list that reflects how you think about and choose music. There is so much overlap and subjectivity in this whole genre business that no predefined list will really suit you, and having too many categories will make a system cumbersome to use. A great deal depends on what you have in your collection.

I consider 'genre' to be a large, overarching category so I limit it to few: classical, rock, pop, jazz, country, folk, world. I listen mainly to classical, so I created some subdivisions (concerto, symphony, choral, and some others) within classical that I tag as 'subgenre.' I don't have large numbers of recordings within genres outside classical so I have not bothered with subdivisions there. Someone else might reverse this: a rock fan would subdivide rock into various styles and just leave 'classical' as the only tag for a small number of albums.

This system works for me in two ways. It's efficient when I want to locate a particular piece of music. If I want a certain piano concerto by Mozart, I can go from composer (Mozart) to subgenre (concerto) to instrument (piano). This effectively bypasses all the other music by Mozart that I have (symphonies, masses, violin concertos). It also works when I want to browse in the original sense of that word, that is, when I am not sure just what I want--like looking at shelves full of CDs or LPs and finding something that fits your mood at the moment. I can start by looking at recordings that feature a particular instrument or were written by a certain composer and narrow things down as I wish.

The trick is to make the system complex enough to handle your specific needs, but not so complex that it's hard to maintain and use. Nobody can do this for you.

As far as labeling things automatically, I'm sure it can be done but it's beyond my skills. Hope this helps.