With so many tunes, it seems difficult to get all the genres right. Is there a way yo perhaps match the track artist and title to a database and verify the genre, or amend it where necessary?
You can use the program "MP3 Rage" to lookup missing tag information (inclusing genre) from the CDDB/Gracenote database.
by dfbills on Dec 30 | 10:28 pm
The problem with using databases such as CDDB to get genre information is that it is often inaccurate, or I may disagree with the genre. For example, Wilco's "Being There" is listed in CDDB as "country." "Alt. Country" or just plain "rock" would be a more accurate genre, IMHO. The only way for me to define genre to my liking, unfortunately, is to do it manually.
by ToothpasteBoy on Jan 02 | 1:33 pm
I love the fact that Wilco's "Being There" is listed in CDDB as "country!" I noticed that this fall when going through my tracks before the CMA Awards.. some joker..
by dfbills on Jan 02 | 1:36 pm
I tried MP3 Rage, but didn't seem to get very far with it. It would be great to have a way to find a better genre for a collection of Electronica tracks. Doug gas some excellent AppleScripts at http://www.malcolmadams.com/itunes/scripts/scripts09.shtml that check out CDDB as well as FreeDB and work with Safari. Interesting approach.
by tomson on Jan 02 | 1:53 pm
...then there's most of heavy metal band W.A.S.P.'s albums having a genre of "Gospel" in the CDDB...
by hondo77 on Jan 05 | 1:19 pm
I think they must have W.A.S.P. confused with Stryper. I can see how one could easily confuse Blackie Lawless and Michael Sweet...
by ToothpasteBoy on Jan 05 | 2:04 pm
Don't get me started..
Of course the CDDB is an amazing resource and it is user contributed.
That said, MP3 Rage is still a pretty neat tool and I doubt that lookup capabilities will ever be added to iTunes.
by dfbills on Jan 06 | 8:48 am
http://www.artistdirect.com
This is a great website for researching about pretty much any band. If you go to the Biography page, there's usually a Related Genre's identification near the top of the page.
by thenightfly42 on Jan 20 | 10:36 am
I like to generalise the genre when I first rip an album. In listening on the iPod, if I think the song should be assigned a different genre, I rate it one star and use my To Be Checked smart playlist to change the genre when I redock.
I didn't think much about genre accuracy until songs that were not hard rock started showing up in my hard-rock smart playlist. This made me aware that genres can be important.
You can use the program "MP3 Rage" to lookup missing tag information (inclusing genre) from the CDDB/Gracenote database.