Where do I find some genre category lists (bigger than default one)?

[hiccup]

anyway, sorry if I am bothering you with a lot of stupid questions…

If I thought they were stupid I probably wouldn't be answering them ;-)
Also, I am guessing this thread can be useful to others having similar questions now or in the future

is it possible to load those 2000 files in picard and auto tag only the genres without touching any other tag?

Yes. But if you are not completely confident in the workings of Picard, do lots of testing on copies of your files first.

PS: since I was playing with it trying to find a solution, I made changes to the genre category list, where do I find again the default list? I can't seem to find a default button or something

You can find it in the startpost here: https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=32471.0
(I am pretty sure that's the version that made it to MusicBee 3.4)

[jonap]

thank you very much, you were very helpful
now I am gonna go study Picard a bit and hope to clean my library
(will probably still ask for help in the picard thread  )

[hiccup]

I'm sorry, I was a bit confused/distracted:
The download link I gave you contained my 'enhanced' version, not the more generic default one.

I just updated the link, it now additionally contains the default hierarchy file that is installed with MusicBee.
(it's named 'MB default hierarchy list')

[Mauser69]

Genres are a big pain in the butt!  I have spent many many hours tagging my library in ways that make sense to me, but I still do not like many of the choices.  It would certainly be nice to be able to just download the genre tags from the web for everything (and you can), but I find them all stupid and confusing.  Just TOO MANY DIFFERENT GENRES USED that do not make any sense.

MusicBrainz uses things like "Art Rock" and "Classic Pop And Rock" that to me are just stupid.  My car uses Gracenote, and those fools actually show some individual songs on an album with totally different genres than all the OTHER songs on the same album (when there is truly no difference in the style of the music).  And to make matters much worse, if you ever want to play your music with something other than MB, like a phone app, DLNA server or car system, most apps and music players do not deal well at all with MULTIPLE genres assigned to the same track, and that makes it important to chose the right FIRST genre in the tag if you ever want to find your music again.

So if you cannot find a site that just uses only the genres that you like, then your only real option is to manually change the genres and genre groupings in MB and then start tagging all the songs the way you  want.  MB is very flexible in this regard, but I still do not know if something from Alannah Myles is Vocal, Adult Contemporary, Hard Rock, Pop, or "Aor" (another MusicBrainz wonder genre), or maybe even "Aor Classic Rock".  I would love it if someone could point me to a better solution to identify the BEST correct genres!  

I have looked up complete lists of genres on various internet sites, and they are simply mind-boggling.  Even with a list, someone still has to decide which ones to really use for consistency.

[phred]

I think someone on this thread said something like selecting the "proper" genre is somewhat subjective. If they didn't, they should have.
What's the difference between "Rock" and "Rock and Roll"?
When it isn't completely obvious to me what genre should be used for an album, I look it up on Wikipedia. There's usually a sidebar on the right with artist and/or album details and one of them is usually genre and I go with that.

[hiccup]

Genres are a big pain in the butt!

They can be indeed.
As soon as you decide to use genres for navigating your music library, you'll have to accept there are no absolutes, truths, wrongs or rights.
But if you relax on possible ocd impulses, and approach them more as describing keywords they are also extremely useful.

I don't agree that 'Art-rock' is stupid.
There are many releases from artists such as David Bowie, Japan, Peter Gabriel, Roxy Music that in my opinion can perfectly be described as Art-rock.

[phred]

I don't agree that 'Art-rock' is stupid.
There are many releases from artists such as David Bowie, Japan, Peter Gabriel, Roxy Music that in my opinion can perfectly be described as Art-rock.

Would Art Garfunkel be 'Art Rock'?

[hiccup]

Would Art Garfunkel be 'Art Rock'?

Haha, f*ck my OCD, I will allow that one.

[jonap]

just want to add that I guess I found a reason for the messed up tags
I completely forgot I setted picard reading somewhere old that a plugin was needed for retrieve genres
so basically I was retrieving genres from last.fm and not musicbrainz
And also Gracenote was another reason for all the genres with mutiple genres name separeted by &
that's why I had a lot of Rap, Rap & Hip Hop, Rap & Hip Pop & Pop, Rap & Pop etc

[hiccup]

I completely forgot I setted picard reading somewhere old that a plugin was needed for retrieve genres
so basically I was retrieving genres from last.fm and not musicbrainz

Perfectly understandable.
There have been some changes to Picard with regards to genres over the last year.
In the past it relied more on plugins, but these days the option 'use genres from MusicBrainz' deserves serious consideration.
You could check their forum to learn what's happening and what you can do to tweak Picard to your liking, and see what genre plugins you may find useful.

Genres is really some continuous work in progress. Both here at MusicBee, at MusicBrainz/Picard, and at many other invested parties such as Discogs and RYM.

One thing I learned is that there are parties that are doing their best to 'get things right' (RateYourMusic, MusicBrainz, Discogs, MusicBee ;-) , and parties that are using genres as some honeypot to get as much plays and traffic as possible. (LastFM, Gracenote, Spotify, Apple Music, AllMusic, and many others)

It's like threading from swamp to minefield and back ;-)

[frankz]

and parties that are using genres as some honeypot to get as much plays and traffic as possible. (LastFM, Gracenote, Spotify, Apple Music, AllMusic, and many others)

FWIW Apple Music doesn't use excessive genres.  There are about 400 sub-genres in use for the coding so when people say "OK siri play me some Contemporary Celtic music" it'll know what to do, but exposed in the Apple Music interface, there are (for the most part - they do use subgenres for some rock categories) 48, and each album only shows one.  One could do worse as far as a list.

African
Alternative
Anime
Arabic
Blues
Brazilian
Children's Music
Chinese
Christian & Gospel
Classical
Comedy
Country
Cuban
Dance
Disney
Easy Listening
Electronic
Enka
Fitness & Workout
Folk
French Pop
German Folk
German Pop
Hip Hop / Rap
Holiday
Indian
Inspirational
Instrumental
J-Pop
Jazz
Karaoke
Kayokyoku
Korean
Latin
Marching Band
New Age
Orchestral
Pop
R&B/Soul
Reggae
Rock
Russian
Singer/Songwriter
Soundtrack
Spoken
Tarab
Turkish
Vocal
World

Link to the Excel Spreadsheet: https://itunespartner.apple.com/assets/downloads/Music_MusicVideo_Ringtone_Genre_Codes.xlsx

[hiccup]

FWIW Apple Music doesn't use excessive genres.

How are: African, Disney, New, etc. genres?

edit:
I looked a bit better at the excel sheet.
It's surely useful for the purpose of finding music on their store, but it's not a comprehensive genre list.
They do have many genres (yet far from complete), but also entries such as: cello, piano, wedding music, exercise, inspirational, instrumental.

It's not a bad list, and it will surely serve its purpose, but it's also a good example of how genres are often mixed up with keywords and styles.