Genres
Someone recently asked me to expand on how I use genres. As is generally noted, standard automatic genres are mostly flawed. There is no consistency across various studios and I have even seen inconsistency within an album…if there is a genre at all. Sometimes the automatic genre assigments are so subjective they are almost comical. For example…Frank Sinatra may be auto classified as Easy listening, Big Band, Swingers, Rat Pack, Oldies…
Madness.
My philosophy behind genres is simple: genres are a way of accessing my music from a different broader angle. Whether it is by directly selecting the genre on my ipod or creating a smart playlist that leverages genres there is one key to success:
Consistency.
Back in the dark ages of managing my Itunes music library I would browse all the genres by using the browser (View\Browser) standardizing simple things like “Rock and Roll” with “Rock & Roll” and “Rock.” This can be done in fairly short order and the result is cleaner genres.
However this did not accomplish my goal of making my music any easier to find. Genres, now standard did not match what I wanted to listen to. After struggling with this I found an approach that works for me:
Instead of coding by music type in many instances I code the genre by the decade.
For example, there is no difference in genre between Elton John’s “Rocket Man” and “Play that Funky Music”, both are coded “70s”. I have found that this a great way of plugging many holes in my collection. I retain genres that I love (classical, jazz, big band, blues, etc) and for others they get decade stamped.
I have recently started experimenting with expanding on this approach. For example, although I may be in the mood to listen to funk, most of my funk was written in the 70s, so I have classified it as 70s. This left me with a decision: select the specific artists and reclassify genre as “Funk” or leave them be. I have been playing with a new approach: why not get the best of both worlds and make a new genre: “70s Funk”. If you are consistent in coding this way you will have maximum flexibility. When making a Smartplaylist you will simply say, “Genre contains” instead of “Genre is”
Music Date Stamp
On alternative that I have been playing with also is ensuring that all my music has the correct year stamp. If you didn’t know, each song can contain what year it was produced. This information should automatically be coded, and if it is you can simply make Smart Playlists which combine Genre with Year range. As a troubleshooting step to check the quality of your date information, make a smart playlist contains all songs that don’t have a date stamp. Do a mass update based on your knowledge…and you are done!