'iTunes Genre Assignment'

In My Humble Opinion
1

Note before you proceed: This thread is NOT about a sex change.

If you use iTunes, you’ve probably encountered the genre field. This thread is about the best way of filling this space for each track in your collection. As such, I invite you to comment on the genre names I use.

My collection contains all kinds of popular music (not a lot of classical), and is particularly heavy on alternative/guitar-based music. I am British, so if you haven’t heard of some of the bands I mention that’s probably why. The bands are a sample of examples of each genre in the library.

Anyway, here goes:

Alt Country: Lamb Chop, Dashboard Saints
Alternative: (basically stuff that is kinda alt-ish and didn’t fit in any of my other categories, e.g. The Shins)
Alternative Dance: Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy, Lemon Jelly
Alternative Pop: The Aislers Set, Beautiful South, Rilo Kiley
Alternative Rock: Ash, Ozma, Terrorvision
Ambient: Air, Moby, Royskopp
Avantgarde: (later) Radiohead, The High Fidelity
Baggy: (Mostly Manchester-scene early 90s music) Happy Mondays, Stone Roses, The Charlatans
Ballad: Beverly Craven, Celine Dion, Dina Carroll
Britpop: (British guitar pop, mid-90s) Menswear, {early-mid} Blur, Shed Seven
Cheese: Los Lobos, Ottowan, Survivor
Classic Pop: Bluebells, {early} Cher, Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel
Comedy: Divine Comedy, Fat Les, Afroman
Comedy Punk: (usually just odd tracks) e.g. Bloodhound Gang
Comedy Rock: (see above) e.g. Tenacious D
Dance: (as opposed to Nineties Dance or Eighties Dance, i.e. recent) Alice DeeJay, Fragma, Jurgen Vries
Dance Covers: e.g. You See The Trouble With Me - Black Legend
Disco: Earth Wind & Fire, Kool & The Gang, Shalamar
Drum & Bass: Just Goldie at present
Eighties Alternative: Depeche Mode, Joy Division, Marc Almond
Eighties Dance: Debarge, Inner City, KC & The Sunshine Band
Eighties Electropop: Duran Duran, Erasure, New Order
Eighties Pop: Frankie Goes To Hollywood, {early} Madonna, Wham!
Eighties Power Pop: Belinda Carlisle, Robert Palmer
Eighties Rap: Grandmaster Flash, Rock Steady Crew, Rob ‘n’ Raz
Eighties Rock: KISS, Whitesnake
Electro: Fischerspooner, Ladytron, Scissor Sisters
Emo: Taking Back Sunday, Thursday
Ethereal: Bjork, Cocteau Twins, Portishead
Europop: Eiffel 65, Las Ketchup, Vengaboys
Female Singer/Songwriter: Alanis Morissette, Kirsty MacColl, Thea Gilmore
Folk Rock: Billy Bragg, The Levellers, The Proclaimers
Funk: Jamiroquai, Prince, Tom Browne
Funk Rock: Bran Van 3000, Modest Mouse
Garage Rock: The Hives, The Kills, The Strokes, White Stripes
Glam: Slade, T-Rex, Wizzard
Glam Rock: (note the distinction here) Electric Six, King Adora, Placebo
Goth Rock: Do Me Bad Things, Shakespear’s Sister
Grunge: Nirvana, The Pixies, Daisy Chainsaw
Guitar Pop: Busted, Natalie Imbruglia, {Misundaztood-era} Pink, Wheatus
Hard Rock: Deftones, Ill Nino, Rammstein
Hip Hop: 50 Cent, Wu-Tang Clan, Xzibit
Indie: The Delgados, Elliott Smith, The National
Indie Pop: (difficult to distinguish from Alternative Rock) Bellatrix, Helen Love, Kenickie, Supergrass
Indie Rock: Kinesis, The Libertines, Nada Surf
Jazz: Etta James, Jamie Cullum, Miles Davis
Latino: Enrique Iglesias, Ricky Martin, Shaft
Light Dance: {post-1995} Everything But The Girl, Jakatta, Moloko
Light Pop: Gabrielle, Louise, {later} Simply Red
Line Dance: The Mavericks, Rednex, The Wonders
Mashups: e.g. Thank ABBA For The Music
Metal: Iron Maiden, Metallica, Black Sabbath
Misery Rock: Coldplay, {mid 90s} Radiohead, The Verve
Modern Rock: Cooper Temple Clause, Interpol, My Vitriol
Motown: The Drifters, Percy Sledge, Sly & The Family Stone
New Age: Enigma, Enya, Sacred Spirit
New Wave: Blondie, Nick Lowe, Siouxsie & The Banshees
Nineties… (there are ‘Nineties’ versions of several other genres, for good 90s smart-playlists)
Nu Metal: Linkin Park, Puddle Of Mudd, The Rasmus
Party Rock: Andrew WK, The Darkness, The Wildhearts
Political Folk: David Rovics
Pop: Anastacia, Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, S Club 7
Pop Punk: Blink 182, Bowling 4 Soup, OPM
Power Ballad: Bonnie Tyler, Lisa Loeb, Richard Marx
Power Pop: No Doubt, Roxette, Wilson Phillips
Punk: The Buzzcocks, Eddie & The Hot Rods, New York Dolls, Sex Pistols
Punk Covers: e.g. Take On Me - Reel Big Fish
Punk Pop: (note different to Pop Punk) Green Day, {later} Jimmy Eat World, OK Go
Punk Rock: Discount, Dropkick Murphys, Tilt
Quirk Rock: (invented specifically for Mr Bungle)
R’n’B: Black Eyed Peas, Destiny’s Child, Usher
Rap: Eminem, Nelly, The Streets
Rave Dance: (odd genre name as “Dance” was needed for these songs to be included in smart-playlists) Nakatomi, The Shamen, SL2
Reggae: Aswad, Bitty McLean, Sean Paul
Remixes: e.g. Sun Is Shining - Bob Marley vs Funkstar DeLuxe
Rock: Aerosmith, Meatloaf, Thin Lizzy
Rock Covers: e.g. Smooth Criminal - Alien Ant Farm
Rock/Rap: e.g. Walk This Way
Seventies: Four Seasons, The Move, Mott The Hoople
Show Tunes: e.g. Fame, New York New York - Frank Sinatra
Sixties: The Byrds, Melanie, The Small Faces
Ska: Madness, The Specials
Ska Punk: Less Than Jake, Mighty Mighty Bosstones
Soft Rock: Heart, Del Amitri, Mike & The Mechanics, Sheryl Crow
Soundtrack: e.g. Flash - Queen vs Vanguard
Spoken Word: Mostly audiobook tracks, plus Message From Ms Matronic - Scissor Sistors
Stadium Rock: U2, Simple Minds, {Mid-90s} Manic Street Preachers
Trance: PPK, Santos, Binary Finary
TV Themes: e.g. Grange Hill Theme
UK Garage: Artful Dodger, DJ Luck & MC Neat, So Solid Crew
US Rock: Everclear, Fastball, Tom Petty
World: Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Nitin Sawhney, {later} Paul Simon

2

If it works for you . . .

Way too many for me though, about as close as I’ve got to micro-genre is Texas Blues Rock for Stevie Ray Vaughn. Most of the time if a special search tag is needed I’ll put it in the comments field. For example a search on ‘pixies’ will pull up Breeders songs too because of the way I tagged those songs.

3

I don’t know if I could manage without most of them. Some that were too small did get phased out, such as ‘House’, ‘Jungle’ and ‘Eighties Dance Covers(!)’, and perhaps two or three more might be lost. Something definitely needs to be done about ‘Indie Pop’, ‘Indie Rock’ and ‘Alternative Rock’.

4

Wow. I would find using that many categories pretty useless as they are so specific. I find it difficult just to make to make a simple call such as whether Blink-182 should be under the category of “Alternative Rock” or “Punk Rock”. If iTunes allowed for music to be in multiple genres, or if there were a hierarchy of genres then I could see it being more useful and manageable.

Personally, I would just create playlists.

5

So how do you decide what genres to put things under? I mean, of all the bands I could come up with as an example of Emo, I sure wouldn’t pick Thursday… (heh neither would these people.) Off the top of your head or do you use a program or website as an aide?

For the most part I don’t like sub-genre labels, because people are definitely hearing something different than I do based on them. I think At The Drive-in sounds a lot like Rush’s most popular singles and since The Used, Coheed And Cambria and Saves The Day sound a like ATDi to varying degrees… yeah, I don’t bet I could convince people that they’re all the same genre. I tend to relate things mostly by how people singing sound, literally, not lyrical content, so there’s that. But ** Future Leaders Of The World**'s “Let me out” does sound like an exact mix of Nirvana and Silverchair, and I don’t think I could unlearn associations like that in order to grasp the subgenres. My associations make me happier anyway, so I think I won’t.

6

The one post I agree with on that thread: I am also sick of fourfa.

After all, we’re not still speaking Chaucer’s English: words change. Which is why I try not to refer to genres a lot.

If I had a playlist, I don’t know what I’d do. I don’t want to think of bands as “being” a certain genre but putting them in a genre would tend to make me think of them that way. But if i didnt categorize, i wouldnt be able to find anything…sigh

7

If it were me, I’d be much more generic- using categories like “rock” and “electronica” rather than trying to specify sub-genres.

But anyway…as far as the list goes, what’s so avant garde about Radiohead? They’re experimental for a pop band (“pop” being used in its most general sense), but “avant garde” seems to imply that they’re on the frontier of modern music.

8

Emo: I haven’t got much of this genre at the minute, and it consists of only 3 tracks. One of the Thursday ones is called ‘This Sadness Alone’ and this was a big push in the emo direction when it came to giving it a genre.

As for “Thursday is to emo what Good Charlotte is to punk”, well, I’m not making another genre, ‘emo pop’ for them like Good Charlotte are in ‘punk pop’!

Offhand, if I had tracks by those bands, At The Drive In would go in ‘Modern Rock’, The Used in ‘Hard Rock’ and S.T.D and Coheed&Cambria in ‘Emo’.

9

isfael: What would you use ‘avantgarde’ for if not tracks like ‘Paranoid Android’ and those on the ‘Kid A’ album.

Not all Radiohead tracks are in there, only ones that are particularly inaccessible.

Some bands are spread across several genres in my library. Radiohead are a good example. with tracks in ‘Alternative Rock’ e.g. Planet Telex, ‘Misery Rock’ e.g. ‘No Surprises’, and ‘avantgarde’ e.g. the aforementioned.

10

Well, I suppose it’s debatable, but I figure that artists like Lachenmann and Ferneyhough are a bit closer to what might be called the avant garde. YMMV

11

elf: I’ve never heard ATDi, but since you say it sounds like Rush, then it’s probably in the same genre as Coheed and Cambria :slight_smile:

re: emo-pop. If I had to make a genre for that, I’d put stuff like Jimmy Eat World, Flickerstick, and Dashboard in there. Which is weird, because they all conform to different criteria of emo, so they end up sounding nothing like each other. Which is why it’s so tough to subcategorize that much.

12

You’ve got (early 21st century) hard rock and nu metal backwards from what most people would agree on. And Rammstein is an industrial metal band anyway. But hey, as long as it works for you, then stick with it.

(Although I cringe a little bit at seeing Metallica and Iron Maiden in the same category…)

13

I understand the sentiment, but I gave up on any serious attempts at classification long ago for my own playlists. These are my categories:

Classic Rock
Metal
Modern Rock
Oldies
Orchestral
Other Crap
Popular

14

My only goal with Genre is that songs within a given one shouldn’t clash on a playlist.

15

Ah. At the beginning I had an ‘Industrial’ category, but there wasn’t much in my collection to put there other than Rammstein!

You would put Linkin Park in ‘Hard Rock’ rather than ‘Nu Metal’?

16

I like using genres, but I try to limit it more than you. One thing I often do is assign multiple genres to songs that fit (so I’ve got the odd song listed as: Canadian, Classical, Christmas or something similar) so they land up in smart playlists.

17

Now that I think about it, Linkin Park probably could count as nu metal, although I’d be more inclined to call them rap metal. Compare them to the big names in rap metal (Biohazard, Faith No More, Limp Bizkit) and the big names in nu metal (Korn, the Deftones, Disturbed), and they sound a lot more like the first than the second.

18

Supergrass in Indie Rock?

Madness I say.

They’re signed to Parlophone

Why not put them in Britpop?

19

Some of the earlier stuff is in Britpop. It depends mroeon the sound of the track than the record label IMO.

20

Well, your post certainly reminds me how long it is since I was in any way shape or form up to date on the music scene…

But shedding some light on classification in general, there’s some research that shows the mind best manages things in groups of 7+/- 2. Assuming you are very attuned to music genres, which you seem to be, that would speak to a maximum of 9 categories. If that really won’t do it for you, have up to perhaps seven subcategories within the 9 main categories.

Dance seems like a good category to me, since when you are playing music at a dance party, for example, you really want all the songs to be danceable. If you have too much dance music to keep it in one category, group it together as Dance 70s, Dance 80s, Dance 90s, Dance New.