The problem with Genres

So here’s the deal: I’ve got myself a swanky new NAS (an Infrant ReadyNAS NV+), and I’ve started re-ripping all my CDs. (For those that are interested, I’m ripping them as AIFF files, at a sample rate of 44.1 KHz (the same sample rate used for creating audio CDs), in 16-bit stereo. This seems to be the most future-proof format, and should give me an exact CD-quality copy.)

But then it comes to classifying the music. I’m using iTunes to rip my music because it’s convenient; one of the useful features being that it downloads the track names and album info from CDDB (or some such site). It also downloads the genre information, but the problem I’m having is that very little music is a perfect fit in any specific genre.

Take for example the last CD I’ve just ripped: The Best of Donald Byrd. This has been described as R&B, Jazz, Funk, Jazz Funk and Fusion amongst other things, but iTunes (and all media players that I’m aware of) only lets me select one genre. It’s only just dawned on me (though I’ve never given it any thought until now), but this is so short sighted of the developers (or the people that wrote the spec.). How do you classify music that spans genres? If you label an album or track as “Jazz-Funk” then it won’t be played when you select your Jazz tracks, and that’s not what I want.

Is there a point to this post? Perhaps not a big one - it was something to do while my tea brews - but if we can’t add multiple genres to our music catalogue, is there really any point in doing it? We can’t even limit the genre selection to a handful because there is still going to be a crossover with some music. Perhaps there is only one genre that is applicable: Music.

So what we need is a music player that supports genre tagging. Anyone know of any?

Tags: ripping, readynas, music, tagging, genres