post a screenshot of your itunes window

i don't keep*

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y109/fez_/itunes-mike.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y109/fez_/itunes-mjohn.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y109/fez_/itunes-mmayer.jpg

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who keeps genre visible in 'browse'? worst metadata in iTunes ever.

yes. star ratings pointless too.

star ratings can be useful, and aren't pre-populated with RANDOM WORDS from CDDB.

i don't use em myself (well not v often). do ppl that do use them ever rate stuff 1 star?

i have tried to use genre, but it's a lot of work, and i never have it visible in the 'browse' columns, just Artist & Album.

I use star ratings to compile future CDs for friends as I'm on the go. I know they have playlist to go feature, but when listening to 500 songs or more, and I only want the tracks I would rate 4 or 5 stars, it helps to have those stored for future reference.

Also, the genre tool is useful if I want to pull out 100 power pop tracks from the genre dubbed "Rock"--I just change it to Power Pop for these tracks.

But I spend waaaayy too much time sorting iTunes, so there you go...

huh, i didn't know you could eliminate the genre window. i thought it was all three in the browse window, or no browse window...

who keeps genre visible in 'browse'? worst metadata in iTunes ever.
Me! But I've subverted Genre into "compilations" "full albums" "spoken word" and "singles" so that I don't have to scroll through the hundreds of one-off artists I have for various singles and compilations.

http://i15.tinypic.com/631iuq8.png

http://www.cs.princeton.edu/%7Eaahobor/Lucy-Day/Images/Covers-50/The-Prydain-Chronicles.jpg

i didn't use genre for a really long time. but now i just have so many albums in itunes, that it's essential. i'd never be able to find anything i wanted to listen to without it.

i would just create genre playlists

genre is idiotic. i turn it off when i'm using other people's computers, just to do them a favor

no, no, no. i've found that it's very useful if you keep your tags really straight.
i know that most people don't though, at least as much as i do, and that i'm a freak.
anyway, i thought this would be a fun idea for a thread. i'm still curious to see all of your itunes windows. i'd probably rather see these than desktops.

The thing I don't like about genre tagging, and correct me if i'm wrong, but you only get one choice. It's either "rock" or "african rock" but never "african" AND "rock"

if you could aggregate tags like on a blog or whatever, yes, i'd be inclined to pay more attention to genre tagging. but it's totally pointless to come up with only one descriptor for a piece of music and expect that to be both specific enough to say anything about the music and also generic enough to make it a useful aggregating tool.

oh, well yeah, it's difficult. i change things now and then. but, i also keep things grouped together. alternative/indie rock - dream pop & shoegaze - post-punk + new wave - power pop & pop underground - post-hardcore & emo.
probably a bunch more like that.

like, yeah, the smiths are a hard one. i had them as indie pop for a long time, then jangle pop, now they're post-punk + new wave, for now. i also have "(unsure)" as a genre, too. it really isn't that hard for most artists, really though. i think it's worth it.

I use star ratings, although I don't really know why. I guess just because it works well as an attention-grabbing visual cue? things I love get 5 stars, things that sound interesting on first listen but will require additional listens at a later time to pass judgement on get 3 stars, things that I don't particularly enjoy but which contain interesting sounds that could be useful for sampling purposes get 1 star.

it might be easier/faster for you to just have three separate playlists to just throw the songs into when they get your attention for whatever purpose.

I use genre all the time. It's handy for playlisting.

Never use stars though.

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uh apologies if this works out badly:
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=584057636&size=o

The thing I don't like about genre tagging, and correct me if i'm wrong, but you only get one choice. It's either "rock" or "african rock" but never "african" AND "rock"

this is true. I don't use itunes but I don't know of any media player that does this and with all the complicated worthless shit they throw in most of them you'd think they'd have gotten around to this feature.

Here's a question: do you encode mixes as one long track with the "join tracks" option or do you split it up? I'm considering re-ripping all my mix albums using the latter method now that I've replaced my broken ipod (whose hard drive failed less than a week after the warranty expired) with a newer model capable of "gapless" playback, especially since I'm concerned about the effect huge files have on the player's battery life. How do you do lot do it?

31g's post:
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1419/584057636_eb0f7b2a7a_o.jpg

http://img519.imageshack.us/img519/2839/ituneske6.jpg

I hit Party Shuffle and it came up with this.

That's one awful party.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1363/584870050_05b6b02d23.jpg?v=0

I never use stars, but am super anal about tagging all albums with a genre tag when I rip them. I have my own internally consistent, though admittedly somewhat arbitrary, system that works pretty well for me.

Also, the "part of a compilation" checkbox is essential for things that actually are compilations.

At the very least, genre tags to distinguish between "suitable for background music" and "not suitable" are handy.

http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b7d803b3127cce85ed9f83079a00000026108AaMnDRk3cND

http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb257/muddlinleigh/screen2.jpg

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u120/kingkonggodzilla/Picture1-1.png

Heh, I didn't even notice that both versions of "Brown Eyes" were on there. How's that for conceptual continuity?

Where the mothafuckin' cheese go at? I DON' KNOW

you anti-genre-tag folks know you can customize the bejabbers outta that shit, right?

um, "bejabbers," J0hn?

Are those under View Options, or do ya have to go into Advanced Preferences?

more like radvanced preferences

Cheers, Andi, I'd never noticed that Folders option under Playlists!

http://i.imgur.com/BQ90C.jpg

http://i47.tinypic.com/29m66wi.jpg

it's actually fairly well organized

a photo, not a screenshot:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7272/7687766854_ee177cba92_c.jpg