Custom Naming

[Supernaut]

Re: Custom Naming

Turns out, although I have GENRE tags filled in, I really only use it one time a year. I click on random play from CHRISTMAS genre when playing holiday music. Otherwise I don't really use GENRE for anything. I typically am looking for a specific artist or specific album to play. So I'm mostly browsing or searching on "artist" or "album".

That's exactly what I do! My Christmas CDs contain a huge variety of genres; Religious, Rock, New Age, Easy-Listening, etc., but it all gets lumped together under Christmas to be shuffled played through the day at work. I can't think of any other time when I actually choose to listen to albums based on the genre tag.

[garym]

Re: Custom Naming

You can obviously quickly change the Genre tag, if / when manufacturers realise / care about what has been happening for the last twenty years! Some players and apps are very good, some simply basic and archaic.

In using for example "Jazz Rock", I wanted to differentiate, for example, Brand X, from any other style of Jazz, or Rock. Really the same with Progressive Rock, Blues Rock, Country Rock, Folk Rock. Punk Rock became simply Punk!

When you have settled on names that work both for you and your players, hopefully it then becomes quick and totally instinctive,

Turns out, although I have GENRE tags filled in, I really only use it one time a year. I click on random play from CHRISTMAS genre when playing holiday music. Otherwise I don't really use GENRE for anything. I typically am looking for a specific artist or specific album to play. So I'm mostly browsing or searching on "artist" or "album".

[Oggy]

Re: Custom Naming

Well, I tried but it didn't work. Like you say, my software either lumped all the words together so I got something like "Rock Punk Anarcho-Punk" as one genre, or it just displayed the first word; "Rock". I also tried adding extra genre fields in the tags section, but each new tag just wrote over the last.

I'll probably just stick to my original plan of using something like Rock as the genre and then adding a couple of sub-genres as styles, hoping that future software might have the ability to read and sort by them (although not holding my breath for that to happen anytime soon). Otherwise I'm just moving further away from my "keep it simple" plan of action.

You can obviously quickly change the Genre tag, if / when manufacturers realise / care about what has been happening for the last twenty years! Some players and apps are very good, some simply basic and archaic.

In using for example "Jazz Rock", I wanted to differentiate, for example, Brand X, from any other style of Jazz, or Rock. Really the same with Progressive Rock, Blues Rock, Country Rock, Folk Rock. Punk Rock became simply Punk!

When you have settled on names that work both for you and your players, hopefully it then becomes quick and totally instinctive,

[Supernaut]

Re: Custom Naming

Semicolons to separate in dBpa, but if you edit your tags using mp3tag, it uses the double backslash. Different codecs use different ways of dealing with multiple value entries (if they deal with it al all), both programs convert your entry to match the codecs' spec.

Some library databases and some players don't deal with multiple values well, they might only use the first entry or use some delimiter between them. In the second case, they are essentially "anding" the two values instead of "oring" them which is the desired action. It is worth your while to experiment a little with your system to see that it does what you want. If not happy, you may want to look at different software to index/search/filter or play your music files.

Well, I tried but it didn't work. Like you say, my software either lumped all the words together so I got something like "Rock Punk Anarcho-Punk" as one genre, or it just displayed the first word; "Rock". I also tried adding extra genre fields in the tags section, but each new tag just wrote over the last.

I'll probably just stick to my original plan of using something like Rock as the genre and then adding a couple of sub-genres as styles, hoping that future software might have the ability to read and sort by them (although not holding my breath for that to happen anytime soon). Otherwise I'm just moving further away from my "keep it simple" plan of action.

[schmidj]

Re: Custom Naming

Semicolons to separate in dBpa, but if you edit your tags using mp3tag, it uses the double backslash. Different codecs use different ways of dealing with multiple value entries (if they deal with it al all), both programs convert your entry to match the codecs' spec.

Some library databases and some players don't deal with multiple values well, they might only use the first entry or use some delimiter between them. In the second case, they are essentially "anding" the two values instead of "oring" them which is the desired action. It is worth your while to experiment a little with your system to see that it does what you want. If not happy, you may want to look at different software to index/search/filter or play your music files.

[Supernaut]

Re: Custom Naming

If your database and codec support multiple genres well, consider tagging with both Rock and Punk (or whatever. That way if you want rock, including the punk, filter for rock. If you want only punk rock filter for punk.

I’m going to try this and see if any of my software has the ability to read multiple genre tags. If it works it could be a great solution, with the first tag as the main genre followed by a couple of sub-genres (or styles). For example, Rock; Heavy Metal; Thrash Metal

Is that the right way to separate them, with a semi-colon and a space?

[Oggy]

Re: Custom Naming

Whatever, Genre (and style) is in the ear of the beholder. Your tastes in music, the nature of your collection, history. All very personal.

This is to my mind the reasons why the Genre tag is so personal wuth the nature of your collection being completely different to mine. You have (as usual) explained very eloquently why one size doesn't fit all. There is a heck of a difference in what would be useful for someone with 50 albums as opposed to 5,000 of any wide genre and so we tag accordingly with personal interpretation and preference coming into the mix.

Thank you for showing a totally different perspective in your full post.

[schmidj]

Re: Custom Naming

If your database and codec support multiple genres well, consider tagging with both Rock and Punk (or whatever. That way if you want rock, including the punk, filter for rock. If you want only punk rock filter for punk.

[Supernaut]

Re: Custom Naming

Well, I cut down on the number of genres I use, but more recently have been using multiple genres in some cases. They work well in FLAC.

I only thought about including styles as a way to make choosing a genre easier. For example, is an album Heavy Metal or Thrash Metal? In this case I can just choose the genre as rock and put both Heavy Metal and Thrash Metal in the styles. It would be useful if the style tags could be used to display albums in a library, like the old Sony Connect software used to do. That worked like a sub-folder of the genre, showing all artists or albums connected to those styles which you could browse easily and surf from one to another.

Anyway, seeing as they don’t serve any practical purpose, I might just forget about styles and include a few more genres (punk, progressive rock, etc.). As for the other metadata, I’ll probably just make sure it’s correct if and when it appears and keep it (Label, Catalog Number, etc.).

[schmidj]

Re: Custom Naming

Well, I cut down on the number of genres I use, but more recently have been using multiple genres in some cases. They work well in FLAC. Three cases, African music, tagged now as African, but also (when I can figure out what it is) as Soucous, Afrobeat, or whatever. The second case, when the artist is kind of "in between" like somewhere between country and rock or folk and rock, I tag it as both. The third is when there is more than one genre on the CD, an artist that does some Reggae, some rock, whatever. Yes, I could tag the individual genres per track, but that typically takes too long. One exception to that is with "sampler" CDs which I typically tag genres per track.

I don't use "pop" at all, I will use rock or R&B (which in my system includes soul and related genres) or "easy listening" which incorporates popular music that wasn't jazz before Elvis, Frank Sinatra, and more current music that isn't really rock. Because I have a lot of Caribbean music, I have separate genres, Soca, Calypso (which overlap), Reggae, Ska, (Soca and Calypso are called reggae by so many, but historically, reggae evolved from Calypso and particularly the Jamaican form of it, Mento. Calypso has been around since the times of Caribbean slavery, reggae is a late 20th century thing.) I also have a genre of Parang which is Trinidadian Christmas music, (originally sung in Spanish but not always now) which I always double tag with "Christmas".

I also have a large steelband and such collection. I use the steelband tag for music that is played, logically, by a steelband, a band that is basically all instruments from the steel drum/Pan family. I use Steelpan for a solo steelpan with a backing track or with other live non steelpan instruments (Think Jimmy Buffett, which gets tagged as Rock as well) There is another category called pan jazz, steelpan in a jazz band, usually gets three genre tags, Jazz; Pan Jazz; Steelpan.

Multiple tags like this let me do a simple sort and get all jazz, including pan jazz, or just pan jazz, or just steelpan which includes the pan jazz.

I don't use "style", as it did not exist when I started ripping and still is hard to use with many players. The "Style" tags on many of my rips are filled with nonsense, that came directly from the Internet metadata sources. I swear some of the people providing the data used every "style" under the sun with many tracks, hoping to get more listens. I've seen metadata listing upwards of 20 styles for one track! Some day I'll take the time to erase all the styles in my metadata. For now I just ignore it. I do realize that I could have used it in cases like Parang by considering it as a style of Christmas music.

Some day I'll take the time to sort out my inconsistent Genre tags, but first I want to finish reripping the several hundred CDs that got ripped to m3a years ago when my only listening device was an Ipod. But then there also are the hundreds (thousands?) of LPs and 78's that I need to transfer to digital. Someday.

Actually, for most of my listening, genre is irrelevant. Probably 90 percent of my listening is in my car, from my phone via Bluetooth. The player is set to play the 100,000 or so tracks randomly in whatever order they come up.

Whatever, Genre (and style) is in the ear of the beholder. Your tastes in music, the nature of your collection, history. All very personal.

[Oggy]

Re: Custom Naming

re: pop and rock. ...if something is not definitely one of my other few genres, it goes in the "Pop/Rock" category (which would include pop, soul, R&B, do-wop, rock, etc.)

I also use Pop Rock as a jack of all trades folder. Of course i've also seen this as your Pop/Rock, Pop; Rock, Pop rock, pop rock, pop/rock, Pop/Rock, Pop / Rock etc! Part of my routine is to hit Capitalize Tags (except for some stylised and Classical naming) for a simply and quickly achievable consistent look and also to help eliminate those multiple Genre tags.

I've tended to keep the more extreme music genre tags as pre-Covid friends might ask for reggae or punk and you could hand the tablet over with a selection.

[garym]

Re: Custom Naming

re: pop and rock. I used to try to keep separate (and even differing rock categories, Rock, Prog Rock, Blues Rock, 50s Rock, Punk, New Wave, etc. And then several pop categories. It got to be too much, and theres a bunch of stuff in the middle that is not exactly rock, but not exactly pop either. In the end I went with a single category for all this stuff and called it: Pop/Rock. In reality, this genre is really just a short name representing: "this music is not jazz, not blues, not country, not bluegrass, not opera, not classical, not comedy, not spoken word, not hip-hop, not folk..." So if something is not definitely one of my other few genres, it goes in the "Pop/Rock" category (which would include pop, soul, R&B, do-wop, rock, etc.)

[Oggy]

Re: Custom Naming

I would like to keep genres as simple as possible. At the moment my list looks something like this:

• Blues
• Christmas
• Classical
• Country
• Electronic
• Folk
• Jazz
• Latin
• Pop/Rock
• R&B
• Rap/Hip-Hop
• Reggae
• Soundtrack
• Spoken Word
• World

Downloaded music often has quite unexpected genres applied, e.g. Classical tracks labelled Avant-Garde. I think Avant-Garde is more of a sub-genre that could be applied to many types of music, not only Classical. I also have CDs which could be described as Religious (e.g. Buddhist chants), but I would put these under World, (some seem to prefer International). Other genres which I think of more as styles are things like Easy Listening, New Age and Singer/Songwriter. Funk and Soul would go under R&B.

I'm still undecided about grouping Pop with Rock, as Rock makes up most of my collection and the majority of it I would never consider Pop.

Any suggestions or reasons for doing things otherwise would be appreciated!

I also have deleted Style.

I have used Pop, Punk, EDM, Glam, Oldies, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s etc. mainly because my wife has so many compilations. I've also used Blues Rock, Country Rock, Folk Rock and Progressive Rock. At some, stage I will probably only have Country and Folk rather than Country and Country Rock etc. It really depends on the balance of your collection, but some can be useful.

I went trough a friend's collection once and because they had accepted whatever was offered, there was over 150 differing genres. Simply putting these into a, standard firm, by capitalising (one button!) and removing hyphens and slashes quickly reduced this by around 70!

Of course you could do what some record shops used to do and have Classical, Jazz and Rock simply to use a label, but to my way of thinking, if you are going to populate Genre, it may as well be vaguely helpful as a search tool rater than a generic Pop Rock / Rock tag.

Ultimately the only person / people the Genre tag affects is you and whoever uses your music library, so maybe whatever comes instinctively to you / them.


Edit. You can batch convert hundreds of Genres very quickly and sometimes we do change our minds!

[Supernaut]

Re: Custom Naming

I went through the phase of 100s of genres and subgenres and also style tags. Deleted all style tags and tried to reduce my genres to a handful, probably less than 15. But different strokes for different folks. ;-)

I would like to keep genres as simple as possible. At the moment my list looks something like this:

• Blues
• Christmas
• Classical
• Country
• Electronic
• Folk
• Jazz
• Latin
• Pop/Rock
• R&B
• Rap/Hip-Hop
• Reggae
• Soundtrack
• Spoken Word
• World

Downloaded music often has quite unexpected genres applied, e.g. Classical tracks labelled Avant-Garde. I think Avant-Garde is more of a sub-genre that could be applied to many types of music, not only Classical. I also have CDs which could be described as Religious (e.g. Buddhist chants), but I would put these under World, (some seem to prefer International). Other genres which I think of more as styles are things like Easy Listening, New Age and Singer/Songwriter. Funk and Soul would go under R&B.

I'm still undecided about grouping Pop with Rock, as Rock makes up most of my collection and the majority of it I would never consider Pop.

Any suggestions or reasons for doing things otherwise would be appreciated!

[garym]

Re: Custom Naming

I've been thinking about doing the same thing! Like you say, on a soundtrack where all the tracks are by the same artist, I would probably save that under the artist's name and not OST. As for genres, that's the last point where I'm still undecided on what to do. I've been looking at the AllMusic and Discogs lists of genres to get some ideas, but it isn't easy. Styles is another tag that I think could be interesting to keep, but it doesn't seem to serve much purpose other than that. Hopefully I'll come to a decision soon!

I went through the phase of 100s of genres and subgenres and also style tags. Deleted all style tags and tried to reduce my genres to a handful, probably less than 15. But different strokes for different folks. ;-)