Organizing your music collection via iTunes can make for some interesting decisions. I personally put Dan Hicks in the pop genre, but then again pop is the most ill-defined grouping I keep. To some extent because of the smart playlist feature it really doesn't matter if you come up with highly specific genres. For instance, let's say you call Dan Hicks "pop/jazz/swing (western)", you can then create a genre based smart playlist where it will show up under "pop", "jazz", "swing" or "western", plus allow you to have the flexibility to not include it in certain playlist. You could do one where you specify swing, but not western. Also if you use the comment category you can get even more creative.
When I first started using iTunes I tried to keep the number of playlists to a minimum, but over time I've changed my strategy and now have more than a hundred separate playlists. Exactly how you organize will really be determined by your music collection and how you really listen to it. For me I couldn't tell the difference between jungle, drum & bass, techno and house, but I do have separate playlists for 50s R&B, 60's Soul, Motown, Urban R&B and Rap/Hip Hop. 50s Miles Davis is different than the 60s quintet which in turn is different than his fusion efforts. There's a Joni Mitchell pop list and a different Joni folk list. At the same time I got a single playlist for Bob Dylan/Elvis Costello (and this includes their songs performed by others).
There's no right or wrong way to do it. This is especially true since with the smart playlist feature the playlists are easily added, changed or deleted. The key is properly encoding the songs when you add them. For me song ratings, genre, comments and composer are the most useful categories.
When I first started using iTunes I tried to keep the number of playlists to a minimum, but over time I've changed my strategy and now have more than a hundred separate playlists. Exactly how you organize will really be determined by your music collection and how you really listen to it. For me I couldn't tell the difference between jungle, drum & bass, techno and house, but I do have separate playlists for 50s R&B, 60's Soul, Motown, Urban R&B and Rap/Hip Hop. 50s Miles Davis is different than the 60s quintet which in turn is different than his fusion efforts. There's a Joni Mitchell pop list and a different Joni folk list. At the same time I got a single playlist for Bob Dylan/Elvis Costello (and this includes their songs performed by others).
There's no right or wrong way to do it. This is especially true since with the smart playlist feature the playlists are easily added, changed or deleted. The key is properly encoding the songs when you add them. For me song ratings, genre, comments and composer are the most useful categories.