Organizing iTunes: Simplify your genre list

Posted by Daniel Stout on Mon 21 Apr 2008 at 10:50 PM

As time goes, iTunes music libraries keep getting larger and larger. As you add songs and videos to the library, it can get unmanageable. One technique for organizing your iTunes library is to simplify and codify the genres that are used on the tracks.

iTunes, when you stick a CD into your computer, will look up the metadata about the album or compilation from a commercial database service from Gracenote, which was known as CDDB (or CD Database) back in the day. Gracenote will match the table of contents of your CD against its database and produce the information about the album if it finds a match.

Gracenote uses a specific list of music genres for its metadata that can be useful in giving a bit of shape to the wide range of metadata found in songs downloaded from outside sources. There’s not much point in getting picky about sub-genres and that sort of thing, but working from a basic list of genres can help to normalize the metadata in your iTunes library.

The main advantage to using the following genre list is that it then becomes very easy to create smart playlists based off of this by either including or excluding certain genres. For an example, some people may want a playlist that includes everything except Holiday music. Or they may create a playlist just for Classical.

The point though is not that this is a comprehensive or exhaustive list, but rather that it’s a starting point for organizing an otherwise unwieldy iTunes music library. You’ll probably want to add to the list genres that may not fit the classification, Mashup for example.

It’s an easy thing to change the genre on many songs. Create a playlist that sorts by existing genre data. You can find out what genres are in your music library by doing a Get Info on any song and then clicking the dropdown menu for the genre of that song. So create a playlist that grabs some genres that fit under, say, Alternative & Punk. Then highlight a bunch of songs together and do a Get Info and change the genre for all of those songs. In my case, it took less than an hour to get my 20,000 song library into shape.

So here is the list of genres. There is also a list of subgenres, which can be helpful sometimes in determining what category something fits into, and I’ll provide that tomorrow. But for now, the 25 top level genres:

• Alternative & Punk
• Books & Spoken
• Blues
• Children’s Music
• Classical
• Country
• Data
• Easy Listening
• Electronica/Dance
• Folk
• Gospel & Religious
• Hip Hop/Rap
• Holiday
• Industrial
• Jazz
• Latin
• Metal
• New Age
• Pop
• Reggae
• R&B
• Rock
• Soundtrack
• Unclassifiable
• World

Notes: You can safely ignore the Data genre probably. Also, it’s a little strange that Industrial gets listed as a genre and not as a subgenre of Alternative & Punk. Industrial is great – or at least it was in the ’80s & ’90s, but it seems a little out of place. It took me less than an hour to get the wildly messy data in my 20,000+ song library into shape using that list as a general guide. Now where creating genre playlists was difficult in the past, it has become much easier.

Update: As promised, here is a list using those same genres as guides but with subgenre information. Hopefully this will help in your classification.

• Alternative & Punk
  • Ambient/Dream Pop
  • Art Rock
  • Art-Folk
  • Avant Rock
  • Brit Pop
  • Emo
  • Experimental
  • General Alternative
  • General Punk
  • Hardcore Punk
  • Indie
  • Lo-Fi/Garage
  • Old School Punk
  • Pop-Punk
  • Post-Punk
  • Power Pop
  • Rap Metal
  • Riot Grrrl/Queercore
  • Straight Edge Punk
• Books & Spoken
  • Comedy
  • General Books
  • General Spoken
  • Poetry
  • Politics
  • Religion
  • Short Stories
  • Spoken Word
  • Stories/Fairytales
• Blues
  • Acoustic Blues
  • Blues Rock
  • Electric Blues
  • General Blues
  • Japanese Blues
• Children’s Music
  • General Children’s Music
  • Japanese Children’s Song (Doyo)
• Classical
  • Baroque
  • Chamber Music
  • Choral
  • Classical Guitar
  • Contemporary
  • Ensembles
  • General Classical
  • Japanese Classical
  • Medieval
  • Opera
  • Romantic Era
  • Piano
  • Renaissance Era
  • Strings
• Country
  • Alternative Country
  • Bluegrass
  • Contemporary Country
  • Country Blues
  • General Country
  • Rockabilly
  • Traditional Country
• Data
  • Applications
  • Games
  • General Data
  • Japanese Karaoke
  • Karaoke
  • Operating Systems
• Easy Listening
  • Bachelor Pad
  • General Easy Listening
  • Lounge
  • Love Songs
  • Mood Music
  • Pop Vocals
• Electronica/Dance
  • Acid House
  • Acid Jazz
  • Ambient Electronica
  • Ambient Trance
  • Big Beat
  • Club Dance
  • Dark Techno/Darkwave
  • Deep House
  • Detroit Techno
  • Drum n’ Bass/Jungle
  • Electro
  • Electronica
  • Gabber
  • Garage
  • General Dance
  • General Electronic
  • General House
  • General Techno
  • General Trance
  • Happy House
  • Hard Trance/Acid
  • Hardcore Techno
  • Illbient
  • Industrial Dance
  • Minimalist Experimental
  • Progressive House
  • Progressive/Dream
  • Rave Music
  • Tech Trance
  • Tribal House
  • Trip Hop
  • Turntablism
• Folk
  • Contemporary Folk
  • General Folk
  • Traditional Folk
• Gospel & Religious
  • Christian Pop
  • Christian Rap
  • Christian Rock
  • General Religious
  • General Christian
  • Gospel
• Hip Hop/Rap
  • Bass Assault
  • East Coast Rap
  • Foreign Rap
  • Freestyle Rap
  • Gangsta
  • General Hip Hop
  • General Rap
  • Hardcore Rap
  • Horrorcore
  • Old School Hip Hop
  • Southern Rap
  • Underground Rap
  • West Coast Rap
• Holiday
  • Chanukka
  • Christmas
  • General Holiday
  • Halloween
• Industiral
  • General Industrial
  • Hardcore Industrial
  • Minimal/Noise
  • Old School Industrial
• Jazz
  • Ballroom
  • Big Band Swing
  • Bop
  • Cool/West Coast Jazz
  • Dixieland/New Orleans Jazz
  • Free/Avant Jazz
  • Fusion
  • General Jazz
  • Japanese Fusion
  • Japanese Jazz
  • Jazz Vocals
  • Latin
  • Ragtime
  • Smooth Jazz
  • Swing Revival
• Latin
  • Afro-Cuban
  • Brazillian
  • General Latin
  • Latin Pop
  • Latin Rock
  • Mexican
  • Ranchero
  • Salsa/Merengue
  • South/Central American
  • Spanish/Portugese
  • Tejano/Norteno
  • Tropical/Samba
• Metal
  • Alternative Metal
  • Black/Death Metal
  • General Metal
  • Gothic Metal
  • Grindcore
  • Hardcore Metal
  • Heavy Metal
  • Pop/Hair Metal
  • Progressive Metal
  • Thrash/Speed Metal
• New Age
  • Ambient New Age
  • Environmental Music
  • General New Age
  • Meditation Music
• Pop
  • Acoustic Pop
  • Disco
  • European Pop
  • General Pop
  • Japanese Pop
  • Teen Pop
• Reggae
  • Dancehall
  • Dub
  • General Reggae
  • Ragga
  • Ska/Rock Steady
• R&B
  • Funk
  • General R&B
  • Motown
  • Soul
  • Urban Crossover
• Rock
  • Classic Rock
  • Folk Rock
  • Funk Rock
  • General Rock
  • Goth Rock
  • Grunge
  • Hard Rock
  • Instrumental Rock
  • Jam Bands
  • Japanese Rock
  • New Wave
  • Progressive Rock
  • Psychedelic Rock
  • Rock & Roll
  • Ska Revival/3rd Wave
  • Soft Rock
  • Southern Rock
  • Surf Rock
• Soundtrack
  • Adult Film/Erotica
  • Anime
  • Film Score
  • Film Soundtrack
  • Game
  • General Soundtrack
  • Japanese General Soundtrack
  • Musicals/Broadway
  • Television Score
  • Television Soundtrack
• Unclassifiable
  • General Unclassifiable
  • Japanese Unclassifiable
• World
  • Aboriginal Australian/Didjeridu
  • African
  • Asian
  • Caribbean
  • Central Asian
  • Classical Indian
  • Eastern European
  • Flamenco/Gypsy
  • French
  • General Celtic
  • General World
  • German
  • Hawaiian
  • Indian Subcontinent
  • Irish Celtic
  • Japanese Enka
  • Japanese Folk
  • Japanese Traditional (Minzoku)
  • Jewish/Israeli
  • Klezmer
  • Middle East/Arabic
  • Native American
  • Oceania
  • Polka
  • Québécois
  • Scandinavian
  • Western European
  • World Fusion
  • Zydeco/Cajun

Tags: cddb · genre · gracenote · itunes · metadata · music · subgenre

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