Multiple genres?

[rjcrum]

I am a classical music listener, and for years I have suffered with tagging all of my music with only a single genre. Although mostly classical works, my library has all sorts of music in it. But specifically for classical, I would love to be able to have Sub-genres along the lines of symphony, Concerto, opera, tone poem, etc.
I’m running Asset on a Synology NAS, Playback with WiiM devices, and controlled by either BubbleuPNP on a Lenovo tablet, or the WiiM Home app on my iPhone.

I’ve poked around here and elsewhere, but there doesn’t seem to be any generalized solution for being able to tag a specific Album with more than one genre.

What I’m trying to achieve, I guess, is that Asset provides a browse tree where I could have genre classical, and then when selecting that be presented with the sub genres that I mentioned.

Genre/Classical
Genre/Classical/Symphony
Genre/Classical/Tone Poem
Genre/Classical/Concerto
Genre/Classical/etc…….

Does anybody have any ideas? I guess it will get into the behavior of the tagging software (MP3Tag for me), the DLNA server (Asset) and Control Point (BubbleUPnP and WiiM Home)

Any ideas or comments?

[schmidj]

How are you storing your music library? FLAC? mp3?

You can have multiple genres for most filetypes, I often have multiple genre tags on my tracks. Different filetypes use different tagging standards which store multiple genres (like multiple artists or multiple composers) differently. Different ripping and tagging software uses different delimiters to separate multiple genres. dBpoweramp uses the semicolon followed by a space as its delimiter. mp3tag (a convenient tag editor many of us also use) uses the double backslash without spaces (\\) as its delimiter. In dBpoweramp, both when entering multiple genres (or artists) and when editing them, if you enter a semicolon followed by a space, the software will enter the data as two entries correctly for the filetype you are using (assuming that the filetype you use allows them) Similarly for \\ with mp3tag.

Asset deals with properly entered multiple genres well, as it does with multiple artists.

Many players don't deal well with it, particularly if you use their built-in library database instead of Asset. And they may only display the first genre if there are more than one.

But what you seem to be looking for is subdivisions of genres, unless you were planning to enter let us say "Classical; Classical/Symphony" as the genre entry for a single track.

First, I'd avoid slashes, different software deals with them differently. Yes, in theory they are fine in tags, but... Also, the slash is an "illegal" character in filenames which may cause confusion in your file naming string. It probably gets replaced with a _ in the filename if you include genre in your filenames.

The real solution to your issue was supposed to be styles, which dBpoweramp supports, to a degree, unless you have disabled it in configuration. The Genre would be classical, the style would be symphony. But you'll quickly discover that style support is a mess, and that, worse, the metadata databases have all kinds of inconsistent garbage entered in style. Asset certainly can support style if you set up the browse tree correctly, but I think few players display it. If your player(s) support it I guess you could use mp3tag to completely remove the existing entries from style, make sure that the style tag exists for anything you want asset to sort, and then enter what ever data you want into the style tag.

I just gave up on style, and use multiple entries for genre.

BTW, if you search through previous entries in this forum, there are plenty of discussions of multiple entries. Some of the older ones may no longer be accurate with current software versions.

[simbun]

I am a classical music listener, and for years I have suffered with tagging all of my music with only a single genre. Although mostly classical works, my library has all sorts of music in it. But specifically for classical, I would love to be able to have Sub-genres along the lines of symphony, Concerto, opera, tone poem, etc.
I’m running Asset on a Synology NAS, Playback with WiiM devices, and controlled by either BubbleuPNP on a Lenovo tablet, or the WiiM Home app on my iPhone.

I’ve poked around here and elsewhere, but there doesn’t seem to be any generalized solution for being able to tag a specific Album with more than one genre.

Hi rjcrum,

Genre is a multi-value tag like any other but a multi-value tag isn't hierarchical, so one way to achieve this would be to store them in separate tags, let's say Genre and Subgenre then in Asset create a drill hierarchy of:



The root under Genre allows you to get back to the browsetree without selecting a subgenre.

[Spoon]

Consider using the Style tag as one for your purpose, you can use as a sub genre.

[vilsen]

Just to elaborate a bit.

The picture simbun posted shows what I do in Asset - but instead of Subgenre I use Style, since it's more of a standard (I think simbun used Subgenre for illustration only). Even so, Style is not supported by my car/portable players.

If your other apps support standard multiple genres but not Style, there's an alternative (though not ideal): You could skip Style altogether and only use multiple genres. You would add your styles to Genre instead. Then in simbun's picture above you would exchange Subgenre with Genre, to setup for browsing by Genre twice. This works in Asset, but there is a pitfall for your other apps... Even if they support multiple genres, they might not follow the standard way of doing it. So to make sure it works in all apps, you'd have to test if your other apps support multiples the standard way or their own way.

As a last resort, there are solutions which would require inventive tagging and/or using the preformat feature in Asset, but such solutions are somewhat complex and tend to be less appealing to most users.

Personally, I mostly tag genres and styles for use in my main library, where they are fully supported by Asset. In my car/portables I've given up and don't care so much about genres/styles anymore. Those players are only using a small part of my main library anyway.

[rjcrum]

How are you storing your music library? FLAC? mp3?

You can have multiple genres for most filetypes, I often have multiple genre tags on my tracks. Different filetypes use different tagging standards which store multiple genres (like multiple artists or multiple composers) differently. Different ripping and tagging software uses different delimiters to separate multiple genres. dBpoweramp uses the semicolon followed by a space as its delimiter. mp3tag (a convenient tag editor many of us also use) uses the double backslash without spaces (\\) as its delimiter. In dBpoweramp, both when entering multiple genres (or artists) and when editing them, if you enter a semicolon followed by a space, the software will enter the data as two entries correctly for the filetype you are using (assuming that the filetype you use allows them) Similarly for \\ with mp3tag.

I AM SO STUPID!!!

I honestly didn’t know about the multiple genre and \\ thing. And I’ve been tagging my MP3, but more recently FLAC, files for 20 years!

This was a revelation to me, and I thank you profusely for pointing it out. Last night I fired up MP3tag and saw, to my surprise, that there was actually ONE album in my collection that had two entries for genre—“World\\Folk.” I have no idea how that came to be; I certainly didn’t put it there. Maybe when I downloaded from Putumayo Records?

Anyway, there the album was, sitting under both genres!

My mind was going crazy last night figuring out what additional classical sub-genres I want.

Like a kid in a candy store…

[rjcrum]

Hi rjcrum,

Genre is a multi-value tag like any other but a multi-value tag isn't hierarchical, so one way to achieve this would be to store them in separate tags, let's say Genre and Subgenre then in Asset create a drill hierarchy of:
.

And hi back to you, Simbun! We meet here, too!?

As I just replied elsewhere, I’m going to try my multiple genre thing today. Given your suggestion of sub-genre and/or style, I think I’ll have to experiment and see what works for me. Thanks for the browse tree picture, too.

[rjcrum]

Consider using the Style tag as one for your purpose, you can use as a sub genre.

I will certainly consider it. Given the other posts talking about style and various players’ support of it, is there a downside?

[rjcrum]

Just to elaborate a bit.

The picture simbun posted shows what I do in Asset - but instead of Subgenre I use Style, since it's more of a standard (I think simbun used Subgenre for illustration only). Even so, Style is not supported by my car/portable players.

Thanks for the endorsement of style. I honestly had never come across it, either! So I’ll have to do a little tinkering.

The only players I really care about are the WiiM DLNA browser and now, thanks to Simbun, BubbleUPnP on a new Lenovo tablet I bought specifically to run it. We’re an iPhone/iPad household, but the lack of some features in the WiiM browser on the iDevices brought me to BubbleUPnP. I’m still learning it…with Simbun’s help over in the WiiM forums.

I put all my music on a USB stick for my car (a Tesla Model Y) but the music browser in the car is absolutely GHASTLY. So I don’t use it much because accessing it is so completely cumbersome.

Now if WiiM would just update their DLNA browser with some new features…

[rjcrum]

So I just fired up MP3Tag, excited to explore “Style.” Imagine my surprise when it wasn’t present in the column tag display! So I added “Style” as a multiple entry custom column, and lo and behold, many, many of my FLAC files had style entries!

I had simply never seen that, because the tag column wasn’t displayed. And to @schmidj’s comment, yes, the Style entries were a mess. Since I had never seen them, I have no idea how they got there. Some are, I suppose, from downloaded/purchased music, but maybe dbpoweramp did something when I re-ripped my CDs last year?

in any case, I just modified my Asset browse tree to expose Style under Genre. Now I get to spend hours cleaning up Style!

Thank you again to everyone here. You helped me address a complaint I have had about accessing my library for 20 years.

[vilsen]

Given the other posts talking about style and various players’ support of it, is there a downside?

The "downside" starts when you go from using just genre to using genre/subgenre, since many players don't support subgenres - at least not in an effective way for browsing. But at least Style is more often supported than any other subgenre name.

the Style entries were a mess. Since I had never seen them, I have no idea how they got there. Some are, I suppose, from downloaded/purchased music, but maybe dbpoweramp did something when I re-ripped my CDs last year?

Style coming from online databases are a total mess, being utterly useless. Maybe a tad better for classical music. So prepare for many, many hours of manual tagging!

[rjcrum]

Circling back on this a few weeks later.

Many thanks to simbun and others here, and also over at the WiiM forum. Because of your collective advice and help, I’m enjoying my music again…not fighting with the technology.

I bought a Lenovo Tab M8 (4th Gen), and then installed BubbleUPnP on it. With more advice from simbun i figured out how to do what I wanted to do.

Then, I spent a couple of days applying the “Style” tag to my classical music. That has allowed me to create subcategories so I can just select symphonies, or tone poems, or instrumental pieces.

I am finally able to do BETTER than I was able to do with my 20-year-old Audiotron.