Genre Tags - Alternative/Indie, etc?

Scrap the lot of them! I have. Inevitably there will be albums that could fit into multiple genres.  What a nightmare trying to decide for each and every album. For me, it's simply not worth the hassle. Streaming is enough trouble, with ripping, tagging, artwork, uploading to NAS drive, rescan NAS drive, empty N-Stream UPNP cache, empty UPNP image cache, network issues, girlfriend has taken away the iPad etc. Genre tags I DON'T need! 

If you're using a PC, I know for a fact that MediaMonkey can be use to edit multiple items. You should be able to rid your entire collection of those dreadful genre tags in one fell swoop!

P.s. Sorry

I use genre in the broadest sense. (Pop and Rock, Blues, Swing, Jazz, Classical, Folk, Classical, Sountrack etc) When in doubt I find discogs has good reliable data to manually enter with. I then use the Style tag to be more specific, (English Folk, Nu-Jazz,  Jazz Funk, Glam Rock, Piano Concerto, British Dance Band etc). In the Style tag I usually have several values..

I try and structure my tags like a large traditional record/CD shop would be organized... If you can remember those...

BTW one of the meta values I use more than I thought I would is the Date (of release/recording). This is often inconsistently set in meta data libraries, so I usually manually over ride and set to the year.

Simon

I agree that the release date tag is worth paying attention to. I'm hopeful that one day I'll use a UPNP server that allows browsing by year of release. That would be a novel and informative way to navigate a collection. 

Goat, for what it is worth, Asset  allows you to do that.

Simon

I use pop/rock for anything that isn't something else, if you see what I mean. I've got jazz, blues, folk, world, ambient/electronica, ECM, ECM new series, vocal - classical, vocal - jazz, classical, concerto, chamber music, soundtrack, and a couple of others. This seems to work really well. If I feel like listening to a jazz singer I just look in vocal - jazz and see what takes my fancy. I'll often think I'll play something, then end up with thinking, I'll play that instead. All good fun.

I use genre to segregate my music mainly by status, top 100, favourites, re-listen, Hot List, uplayed, recent etc.

 Funny story, 2 months ago I found that I had 31 Albums in the genre 'new' that I had never played.

Gerry

Thanks all,

This is all about browsing or what librarians call "discovery."  Its a real issue for digital anything - books, music, etc.  I was searching for a track the other day that I thought had 2 words, but it was really 1. (forget the name now) but couldn't find it using search.

I've cut the genre's down, and its now much easier ironically to find what I want, especially when using my phone to control playback.

Simon - I'd forgotten about the Styles tags.  Thank you. I've now turned those on to display in JRiver and have a new task ahead.

Some of the genre tags are ridiculous, I usually just tag Rock, Jazz,Folk etc.

I have no need for a "post pubescent, neo-Jazz fusion folk" genre!