Genres = Unlimited rating system

[ballbagcheese]

Hello fellow zuners,

For instructions on how to turn genres into unlimted rating system skip to bottom, to hear me babble on keep reading.

All this discussion about the heart\broken heart system really got me thinking about a creative ways to rate my music.  You are pretty limited with the current system as I use a full heart for all songs I like and I use the broken heart for songs I like that have profanity.  Ever since Jander laid out that nice post about playlists I have been trying to figure our how to make my autoplaylists more dynamic and I have found that answer in the Genre tab.

Currently in my collection I have 29 genres of music and this really pisses me off becuase I have a Zune Pass and when you have this the genre tagging gets a little out of control.  For example Hip hop alone there was Hip Hop, Hip-Hop, Hip-Hop\R&B, blah blah blah blah.  The genre system is a complete mess if you ask me.  So I started conslidating all of my Hip Hop genres into one big Hip-Hop file becuase it is useless to search for an artist under the genre tagging.

What I found was that you can manuallaly create your own genre by right clicking on the album or a song with in an album.  This is when it hit me that you could really create some kick ass rating system that you could never have with a 5 star rating system.

For example you could create your Rock 5 *, Rock 4*, and so on for rap, jazz, metal, country.  You could create it anyway you like whatver your choice you dont even have to rate them as 5 star or 4 star it could be whatever you desire.

Another bonus to this is that you can now actually use your genre tab for some quick access to great music instantly.  As stated above I don't currently use the genre tab on the software or on the Zune itself.  This just opens up another avenue to listen to music for me and I hope it will for you as well.

If you don't want to change the genre you can still rate these songs anyway you want in your playlists by changing you the conductor field in the edit function of the song or album.  Then you can use this feature in the autoplaylisting section.

Again it is simple and here are the instructions.

Step 1.  Make sure you are in the Music collection tab

Step 2.  Right click on song or album

Step 3.  Left click on edit

Step 4.  Left click in to the Genre field

Step 5.  Creat your own rating

After you have created a rating in the genre field it will show up in the left hand pane in the genre tab on the software.  You only have to create the rating one time because after the genre is created you can then drag and drop the song or album into the genre located on the left hand side of the genre tab.

Hope this has been easy to understand and I don't know if anybody else has posted this before but it just came to me last night and it works out pretty great.

The heart system can now be used as just a quick tagging system on the zune.

[ballbagcheese]

I was also just thinking that if you didnt want to use the genre as a rating system you could use them for mood settings.  I beleive it was Jander who really wanted to make playlists based on mood. 

[Dellis]

I was also just thinking that if you didnt want to use the genre as a rating system you could use them for mood settings.  I beleive it was Jander who really wanted to make playlists based on mood. 

I used to use the allmusic "Styles" information to tag genres (that way madness lies, by the way). Currently, I use "Find info" to get the Genre information (which I think uses Allmusic anyway). This will also overwrite the genre information for Zune Pass tracks, so it helps me keep things consistent.

[glowbee]

Currently, I use "Find info" to get the Genre information (which I think uses Allmusic anyway).

I find this method quite aggravating, because it seems to tag 80% of my music with the genre of simply "Rock". Or is it just me? 

Anyways, I like the genre tags to be a little more specific. Thanks for the tip, Mr. Cheese.

[Mockers]

I use genres all the time. That why before Jander' playlist posting I really didn't do much with those. I try to keep the genres down to about 40. It was tough at first with the software upgrad because there were about 100 genres listed and I had to go through them all. But it's easy to keep up if you do some regular housecleaning. They can be like extra playlists. I have your typical ones, like Christmas, Clasiscal, Jazz, etc. Then I have some like Instrumental, Love Songs, Classical Vocal, Duet, Wedding.
Some genres include TOO MUCH. That's when you can create a new genre to help pare down the big ones.
Now I'm going crazy with playlists, too, so my dog wonders why I'm sitting at the PC so danged much!

[ballbagcheese]

I use genres all the time. That why before Jander' playlist posting I really didn't do much with those. I try to keep the genres down to about 40. It was tough at first with the software upgrad because there were about 100 genres listed and I had to go through them all. But it's easy to keep up if you do some regular housecleaning. They can be like extra playlists. I have your typical ones, like Christmas, Clasiscal, Jazz, etc. Then I have some like Instrumental, Love Songs, Classical Vocal, Duet, Wedding.
Some genres include TOO MUCH. That's when you can create a new genre to help pare down the big ones.
Now I'm going crazy with playlists, too, so my dog wonders why I'm sitting at the PC so danged much!

If you have your genre's the way you want them to you can really do some great auto playlisting.  Also in the edit feature you can change the composer field and put other stuff in there and really make some more intresting autoplaylists.

[WillysJeepMan]

I use genres all the time. That why before Jander' playlist posting I really didn't do much with those. I try to keep the genres down to about 40. It was tough at first with the software upgrad because there were about 100 genres listed and I had to go through them all. But it's easy to keep up if you do some regular housecleaning. They can be like extra playlists. I have your typical ones, like Christmas, Clasiscal, Jazz, etc. Then I have some like Instrumental, Love Songs, Classical Vocal, Duet, Wedding.
Some genres include TOO MUCH. That's when you can create a new genre to help pare down the big ones.
Now I'm going crazy with playlists, too, so my dog wonders why I'm sitting at the PC so danged much!

If you have your genre's the way you want them to you can really do some great auto playlisting.  Also in the edit feature you can change the composer field and put other stuff in there and really make some more intresting autoplaylists.

Exactly.  I received confirmation from a member of the Zune team that monkeying with the COMPOSER ID3 tag will not interfere with how the software registers plays.

But as useful as re-purposing the composer tag is, I'm holding off going through my collection until after the 3.0 software/firmware update.   I want to see what gets added and what is left omitted.  THEN I'll work on tweaking tags (knowing that we'll have between 6-12 months before the next major upgrade).

[Mockers]

Oh, I totally agree. Genres work only so far. The best thing about playlists is that one song can belong to more than one playlist, unlike genres. Using the two in concert, autoplaylisting is so fun! Before Jander's post (I know, I'm a broken record there) I didn't know what the AUTO really meant. When I realized they self-update, I was totally hooked!

[Dellis]

Currently, I use "Find info" to get the Genre information (which I think uses Allmusic anyway).

I find this method quite aggravating, because it seems to tag 80% of my music with the genre of simply "Rock". Or is it just me? 

Anyways, I like the genre tags to be a little more specific. Thanks for the tip, Mr. Cheese.

Yes, "Rock", "Alternative", "Rap", etc. It's (by definition) generic, but I find that it's at least more accurate than what Zune Pass presents. Call it an extreme reaction to previous position

If you want to get a feel for the insanity that I'm talking about -- I present this:

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=73:20

Allmusic's list of rock subgenres.

[glowbee]

Yes, "Rock", "Alternative", "Rap", etc. It's (by definition) generic, but I find that it's at least more accurate than what Zune Pass presents.

Ain't that the truth. I definitely won't argue with you there. The Zune Pass genre tagging stinks.  Pretty much why I've taken to genre tagging my stuff by hand these days. 

[Zunerama Ed.]

Nice tip, ballbagcheese. I've blogged it here.  - Harvey

[ballbagcheese]

Nice tip, ballbagcheese. I've blogged it here.  - Harvey

Yay, I made front page news.  It is always funny to me when anybody else has to type in my ballbagcheese name.  Thats why I chose it, ha ha.