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Your own iTunes music categories

I was trying to figure out how to classify Dan Hicks as I ripped Beatin' The Heat and some of his oldies for delivery to my iPod. The Gracenote database puts him under rock. Rock?--I don't think so. Maybe I need to create a Swing category, but that would make for some hairy decisions with some of my Jazz tunes. Maybe Country Swing. I don't think of Dan as country, but that would allow me to put him in there with Bob Wills, which I don't think Dan would mind. Maybe I need a String Swing category; then I can have Dan and Bob live with Django.

I have Eva Cassidy in Pop, with Frank Sinatra. As I hardly have any AM radio type Pop in my collection, Pop is an available category for me. Maybe I'll put Rickie Lee Jones' album of covers, It's Like This, in there. But creating a Vocals category, as vague as that would be, might speak to my listening habits better.

The playback options of disk-based music systems makes this categorizing question much more significant than just deciding how to arrange your LPs or CDs on a shelf. In my physical collection, I use as few categories as possible. iTunes calls for a different approach, without going overboard.

Any examples of music categories you've made up to fit your collection or listening habits better? Any stock categories that you find useless?
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Showing 1 response by kthomas

kthomas
911 posts
 
The only way to maximize efficiency and descriptive nature is to have categories that can be AND'd together. I don't believe any of the current music library programs do this, though you can do it with "searches" selectively by putting in keywords in known fields. Still, I have found trying to set up WMP this was as fairly cumbersome and non-intuitive.

The most flexible version of this I have found to date was with the shareware program that was used to drive the SLINKE system - a serial port control box to control CD changers. Having all those wires was clunky, and the software had some significant issues, but they gave you a highly customizable keyword list for which you could set any that applied just by clicking on them. You could then search with complex logical equations. So, you could add keywords like "Live" or "Cover" to be able to take a typical genre and hear only live music of that genre. Not sure how useful that would be to many people, but the interface allowed for more possibility than anything I've seen yet.
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