Proposal: Extend 'Genre' hierarchy with 'Subgenre'

[hiccup]

Is there a sensible limit to how large the TagHierarchy list should be?

I am asking because I notice a lot of genres are not matched with my list because of varying spellings:

'Pop music' vs. 'Pop'
Hip-Hop' vs. 'Hip Hop'
'Psy Trance' vs. 'Psytrance'
 
etc. etc.

It would not be terribly difficult for me to add all such variations to the hierarchy list, but it would grow enormously.

Thoughts?

P.S.
The same issue/question applies to the 'group genres' list.

[psychoadept]

Haha, welcome to the world of authority control. I would definitely pick one that seems most common or most correct and let people standardize their tags to match (or add their own spellings to the hierarchy)

I haven't looked closely, but I wonder if there's something useful here: https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/genremusic.html

[alec.tron]

As I was curious as well,  I chucked all mappings I had into one file, and am at ~3600+ lines & ~100k characters... and it still loads & behaves fine...
Not sure that would classify as 'sensible', but it runs/works.
c.

[hiccup]

Haha, welcome to the world of authority control. I would definitely pick one that seems most common or most correct and let people standardize their tags to match (or add their own spellings to the hierarchy)

I haven't looked closely, but I wonder if there's something useful here: https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/genremusic.html

I'll check it out, but the first thing I notice is a notification: "Updates have been posted to: Candidate Music Genre/Form Terms for Discussion [PDF, 1.5 MB]"

It's dated March 2013…
I'm pretty sure they won't have Simpsoncore in their list.

[hiccup]

As I was curious as well,  I chucked all mappings I had into one file, and am at ~3600+ lines & ~100k characters... and it still loads & behaves fine...
Not sure that would classify as 'sensible', but it runs/works.
c.

Thanks alec.tron, I will consider to also add such common variations/errors of genre names then.
Not a fun job, and not something I am looking forward to, but having a system now that only partly works because of this is also spoiling the fun.

[hiccup]

Haha, welcome to the world of authority control. I would definitely pick one that seems most common or most correct and let people standardize their tags to match (or add their own spellings to the hierarchy)

That would be my idea too on a list intended for savvy users that have a serious interest and time to spare on this.

But the hierarchy and genre grouping lists I provided today were intended to be a candidate to possibly be included with MusicBee.
And if that would happen it would probably be nicer if it 'just works' in the majority of cases.

And to be clear, I am not talking about actual misspellings.
Even the big players (Spotify, Discogs, RYM, Wikipedia, MusicBrainz) are often not agreeing and using different spelling for genre names.

I am certainly not going to accommodate for all of them, but it would probably be good if at least the most common tagging sources that MusicBee and Picard use are matched in this regard.

[Steven]

I have created a new genre hierarchy list.

This one contains all the genres that are currently used by Discogs and MusicBrainz.
It is using categories I think will be practical for the average user.

I also created a genre grouping list that matches these genres and categories.
(which can be added via Tags (2) > group genres)

download Genre hierarchy and grouping list

Thanks. I have updated the default genre category mappings using this file.
For the Tag Hierarchy file I see there is no Sub-Genre in your file which I think is fine as almost no one will already have a sub-genre tag

[Steven]

https://getmusicbee.com/patches/MusicBee34_Patched.zip

- right click menu now implemented
- option to show file counts

[zkhcohen]

https://getmusicbee.com/patches/MusicBee34_Patched.zip

- right click menu now implemented
- option to show file counts

When switching tabs to the Music Explorer in this version, I receive the following:

Code

MusicBee v3.4.7513.38999P  (Win10.0), 27 Jul 2020 7:12:

System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
   at #=zA4nZ_eN$R5hFpZcRUZmLNNnCXbgY.#=zg7WJjjrFadmv.#=zTiy8ZadsRtcv(#=z6QTrtT27OWeBCOxKY1TsojI=[] #=zqZkFQ5o=)
   at #=zA4nZ_eN$R5hFpZcRUZmLNNnCXbgY.#=z4LUnslxpDePm4tERWg==.#=zvtHcZMe48vbM(Boolean #=zjur8ldlNjNOd)
   at #=zA4nZ_eN$R5hFpZcRUZmLNNnCXbgY.#=z4LUnslxpDePm4tERWg==.#=q2qGxNQJ6c6pKI$7Ud8n2Gth3o7CT9AKNYzy9JQ9pKBk=._Lambda$__0()

[alec.tron]

Same here, switching to a tab displaying by Album with Cover, I get something similar/same-y, as well as on Music Explorer. :

Code

MusicBee v3.4.7513.38999P  (Win10.0), 27 Jul 2020 17:35:

System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
   at #=zA4nZ_eN$R5hFpZcRUZmLNNnCXbgY.#=zg7WJjjrFadmv.#=zTiy8ZadsRtcv(#=z6QTrtT27OWeBCOxKY1TsojI=[] #=zqZkFQ5o=)
   at #=zA4nZ_eN$R5hFpZcRUZmLNNnCXbgY.#=z4LUnslxpDePm4tERWg==.#=zvtHcZMe48vbM(Boolean #=zjur8ldlNjNOd)
   at #=zA4nZ_eN$R5hFpZcRUZmLNNnCXbgY.#=z4LUnslxpDePm4tERWg==.#=q2qGxNQJ6c6pKI$7Ud8n2Gth3o7CT9AKNYzy9JQ9pKBk=._Lambda$__0()

Tab with Album with Covers only produced the error once (for me). Music Explorer tabs do multiple times / continuously.
Tab with Tracks view does not produce the error.

Churs.
c.

[Steven]

it should be fixed now

[zkhcohen]

it should be fixed now

Confirmed. Thanks.

[hiccup]

For the Tag Hierarchy file I see there is no Sub-Genre in your file which I think is fine as almost no one will already have a sub-genre tag

That is because this is a version I created solely with having general usage in mind.
Ignoring, and being comfortably numb about most of my personal impulses and more ocd-inclined preferences, and only trying to accommodate what would be useful for 'the average MusicBee user'.

[hiccup]

Both the genre hierarchy and the genre grouping files are updated:

- For genres that were spelled differently between Discogs, MusicBrainz and RYM, all variations are now added.
   So e.g. 'Psytrance', 'Psy-trance', 'Psychedelic trance', or 'Hip hop' 'Hip hop music' 'Hip-Hop' will all be recognized, categorized and displayed.

- A couple of credible genres that could be retrieved when using Wikidata as a source were added.

- 'Style/Format' was added as a top hierarchy ('Other' has been removed)
    (this Style/Format category will contain descriptors that are too vague to be applicable to a single music genre category)

- Some small mistakes were corrected.

For statistically interested users:

This mapping list contains 1153 genres (including variations on their spelling)
All of them are present in the databases that many users will be using for auto genre-tagging at this moment in time.
(I am curious and awaiting what will happen when RYM becomes Sonemic though, and if they then will make API's available. I'll probably have to get busy again then.)

F.w.i.w.; the Genre grouping list that MusicBee has been using for years now contains 466 genres, many of which don't even match with what will be retrieved from online sources.

Even though this all has been triggered because of current developments with MusicBee 3.4 beta, the provided Genre grouping list can also be applied to regular non-beta versions of MusicBee.
(just copy the contents of the text file, and paste it into MusicBee's Genre Categorisation Editor, Tags (2) > group genres)

—

This version is the final one as far as I am concerned.
(unless factual mistakes come to the surface, or if users have good suggestions that would improve it for general use)

download Genre hierarchy and grouping list

An impression on the structure:

[zkhcohen]

This version is the final one as far as I am concerned.
(unless factual mistakes come to the surface, or if users have good suggestions that would improve it for general use)

This is a really comprehensive list; unfortunately since it only has two levels, I would argue that it's not as practical (even for general use) as a structure such as this one:



Obviously it would require quite a bit of effort to further classify the genres you've included into sub-genres. Note that in Alec's implementation of sub-genre structuring, he opted not to use "subgenre" tags, which I think is the most appropriate solution for making it accessible to normal users.



I might try to merge the two in the Community Version, here: https://github.com/alectron/MusicBee_TagHierarchies/tree/master/Genres

---

EDIT:

I created a combined, 3-layer version here:

https://github.com/alectron/MusicBee_TagHierarchies/blob/master/Genres/Community%20Versions/(Combined%20with%20Hiccup)%20MusicBee_3Layer.txt