[timberwolf]

Just like you Thrasher, I find the Genre simply unhelpful or useless because so many songs could fit in several genre or subgenre. I just fill out the Genre category in the id3 tag because its there but I don't entertain it helping me in navigation or search purposes, I could use it to search but it would take longer than using artist, title or album. For me, The Genre is just there for info purposes but I don't need it since I generally know my music very well.

To me the most important information is the Artist, Title and Album. with these three, I could navigate to the song or album I was looking for right away.

 

[GSTom1]

Quote:

Originally posted by timberwolf Just like you Thrasher, I find the Genre simply unhelpful or useless because so many songs could fit in several genre or subgenre. I just fill out the Genre category in the id3 tag because its there but I don't entertain it helping me in navigation or search purposes, I could use it to search but it would take longer than using artist, title or album. For me, The Genre is just there for info purposes but I don't need it since I generally know my music very well. To me the most important information is the Artist, Title and Album. with these three, I could navigate to the song or album I was looking for right away.

For my purposes, I find browsing the genre to be very useful. I have nearly 500 albums on my Zen. Instead of having to navigate thorugh all of these (in alphabetical order), I can simply use the genre to divide my albums into 20-30 smaller sub-categories.

I was recently using my Zen at a party. I was easily able to find the songs I needed by going to my dance, techno hip hop and pop compilation genres.

 

[steel102]

i would have preferred folder-tree, because thats how i've always had it, but when i got my karma, i had to tag everything. luckily it was fairly painless w/ mp3 tag studio. at this point i wouldn't mind either.

 

[JiPi]

Folder-Tree!!

Just more convenient for the use I would make of it.

 

[CrawlingEye]

I think if someone's upset about id3, they need to start buying music and ripping it, rather than dowloading it.

 

[DLP]

I prefer ID3 tags because you can resort your music without having to move any files around or muck anything up. With folder tree, the files are sorted one way and one way only unless you want to go around changing them. I just wish iRiver would make a program for Mac that would create the database file.

 

[timberwolf]

Quote:

For my purposes, I find browsing the genre to be very useful. I have nearly 500 albums on my Zen. Instead of having to navigate thorugh all of these (in alphabetical order), I can simply use the genre to divide my albums into 20-30 smaller sub-categories. I was recently using my Zen at a party. I was easily able to find the songs I needed by going to my dance, techno hip hop and pop compilation genres.

This is where I made use of the playlist feature of the zen. I have every sort of playlist imaginable like 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, pop metal, metal, rock and roll, dance, classical, classic rock, punk rock, rock, hard rock, death metal, nu metal, alternative, love songs, prog rock, prog metal, disco, new wave, british invasion, britpop, instrumental, easy listening, etc. ... all with about 60 to 150 songs in them. Some songs would be in one or two of the playlists because they cross genres, or I just like them too much.

Because I chose those songs in the playlist, the result is NO FILLERS. I also arranged the songs in the playlist in the order according to my preference. This way I could set the mood where a series of songs would be fast or loud then would be followed a song or two of soft or slow ones for a breathing space, then would peak again with faster paced songs, etc. ... sort of like following peaks with gentle valleys or hills to enhance the listening experience.

I work nights and those long playlists sure help when there's nothing to do at work and I have to kill 4 to 5 hours playing Freecell.

 

[austonia]

still; amazing how split the vote is. I expected heavier preference towards the ID3 database.

I am very surprised more players do not offer Folder-tree browsing as an option, considering the number of people who prefer it...

on a side nite, I was reading through an Archos manual (downloaded from Amazon) when I noticed they also support ID3 tag editing on the player itself. As far as I know, no other brand of player offers this feature. Very cool, even if can't build an ID3 tag database.

 

[Jeffreybar]

Quote:

Originally posted by CrawlingEye I think if someone's upset about id3, they need to start buying music and ripping it, rather than dowloading it.

Huh? I strongly prefer folder-tree but at least 75% of my stuff is ripped from CDs I own (and paid for). Could you explain the correlation between preferring id3 and buying your music?

 

[rwooda]

Quote:

Originally posted by Jeffreybar Could you explain the correlation between preferring id3 and buying your music? [/B]

Of course there is no correlation. I think CrawlingEye is suggesting that people who rely on others to rip their music shouldn't complain if the tagging is messed up.

Fair enough, but:

1) you can fix the tags regardless of where you got the music from

2) tagging has its limits. 99% of my music I have ripped myself, and tagged it as well as I could, and still find tagging too limiting for me.

 

[TMC]

I really can't believe how even it is. It makes me wonder if there are people who participated in the poll that don't have that much experience with id3? I know before I got a good id3-tagger and some experience at doing multitagging etc I thought it was going to be a real hassle. But once you get into it I find several benefits of good id3-tags, like the possibility to quickly find a song even if you forget what album it was in.

 

[elinenbe]

I can set my folders to be any way I want!

year/artist/album/

or

/artist/year/album/

and what is the deal with the ipod allowing browse by genre or COMPOSER! instead of by year!! Seems silly. Genre is just plain dumb -- that is why program like moodlogic and musicbrainz tend to stay away from genre.

-eric

 

[timberwolf]

elinenbe, the point is that you don't need folders in organizing your mp3s when you use id3 tags. The point is that you do away with all those gazillions of folders, subfolders or sub-subfolders which will only continue to increase as you add more artists or albums.

 

[GSTom1]

Quote:

Originally posted by elinenbe I can set my folders to be any way I want! year/artist/album/ or /artist/year/album/ and what is the deal with the ipod allowing browse by genre or COMPOSER! instead of by year!! Seems silly. Genre is just plain dumb -- that is why program like moodlogic and musicbrainz tend to stay away from genre. -eric

You get much better search capabilities with id3 tags, plus you can fill them out anyway you want to.

I'd rather browse by genre over the year anytime! Who can remember the year when an album came out anyway?

I think it's great that the iRiver iHP-1XX series of players offers both methods to browse your music, but I heard that the id3 tag methed is slow because it has to scan the hard drive each time and build a new library. Can someone confirm this?

 

[Jeffreybar]

Quote:

Originally posted by TMC I really can't believe how even it is. It makes me wonder if there are people who participated in the poll that don't have that much experience with id3? I know before I got a good id3-tagger and some experience at doing multitagging etc I thought it was going to be a real hassle. But once you get into it I find several benefits of good id3-tags, like the possibility to quickly find a song even if you forget what album it was in.

I think that part of it has to do with how you think and listen to your music. If you can align your thoughts to genres or strict division according to artist, then id3 tagging makes sense. But if you have a more heuristic sort of way of managing your collection, folder-tree makes sense.

For example, I used to be (still am somewhat) a huge Pink Floyd fanboy. So, I can have all my pink floyd and pink floyd related stuff all in one high-level folder, with levels of folders below that which then subdivide this (for example, I have one directory for studio albums, one directory for boots, one directory for b-sides and unreleased stuff, one directory for solo/side projects of the individual members...then next level down these are divided into one directory each for each side project, etc.). If I used id3 tags and wanted to look at these by artist, I'd either need to use inaccurate tags, or these would not be immediately linked heuristically by the tag (e.g., my Roger Waters stuff would be separate from my Dave Gilmour stuff). Of course I could all put them in a genre entitled "Pink Floyd", but then I couldn't link Pink Floyd to other "Progressive Rock" stuff by genre, so it becomes limiting there.

I guess what I'm saying is that my mind works in messy heaps, not neat organized stacks, but that it is an organization which works for me. And I want an mp3 player which doesn't say "No, you can't do that."

-Jeff