@whgmkeller
I’ve been a fan of dbpoweramp for years, wasn’t even aware of Asset. Unfortunately (actually thankfully), I gave up completely on uPNP and switched to XBMC about a year ago. However, it’s not a style frame, it’s just different behavior for Grouping. I’m not really sold on the Grouping/Styles thing yet, as some people (DJs) actually use Grouping for more important things and not appropriate for styles.
Keep in mind that Apple is “above” the ID3 spec and is not afraid to implement things that do not conform. They are not really something to follow, but adapt to.
@Dieter Stockert
Classical is always going to be a PITA to categorize. Even music majors do these “renaissance with a bit of baroque, inspired by blah blah” descriptions. I’m one of those with a dozen albums, and you’re right, I give them the basic genres cos when I want Sibelius, I go to Sibelius.
- Here’s my long-winded stance/opinion/situation.
I used to gloss over genres cos nothing utilized them nicely. As we started accumulating devices around the house I realized I should start putting genres in.
I switched to XBMC about a year ago from uPNP/PS3, and found it has a lot of nice sorting features (read: usable). This is where I went nuts on genres.
The 1st problem is that they’re subjective. The second problem is the user-submitted genres (Musicbrainz, lastfm, discogs), not only are there those debates about “such-n-such isn’t real punk”, but also things like “Should be public domain” as a genre all over Musicbrainz. Useless
After a lot of searching, I found that allmusic uses a set list of genres for the reviewer to pick from. They’re not always exactly how you would classify stuff, but they were very consistent and predictable. Their hierarchy also makes a lot of sense with how they categorize their Styles (See http://www.allmusic.com/genres). Of course, you could always tweak your own.
Now, how to get these into Jaikoz? There are (too) many posts around here (from me) about genres. The path I take currently is I put everything from allmusic into the genre field. The genres are always the first, followed by the styles. I use an Excel function to create my string, and once pasted into Jaikoz it becomes a multi-value, but the frame is really a null-delimited string.
BUT, XBMC isn’t working with null delimiters (there is no null character in XML. It’s being worked on, and possibly already fixed in a nightly, but I’m holding out for Frodo in a few months). So currently it will only show the first genre in the frame which is only 14 or so according to allmusic. When XBMC fixes the null issue, all genres and styles will show up. I guess it will be a memory thing differentiating the genres from the styles, but see below “My Master Plan”.
BTW, a while back this was also working properly with Apple. We no longer have Apple in the house so I can’t check anymore. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s broken though. :shock:
My Master Plan
I’m not sure how to achieve this yet, baby steps. I want to go to the Genre list and only see the 14 allmusic genres. I want that to expand the appropriate styles which would return the applicable albums. I’m hoping I can just write some XML exceptions to separate the genres/styles, but the XBMC window behavior is something I can not change unless I learn some programming. If this grouping field styles thing becomes the norm, I can simply open 50k songs in Jaikoz, copy and split the entire genre column in Excel, and paste them back in.
I realize I’m putting all my eggs in one XBMC basket here, but the functionality is the same as any device potentially could have. IMO XBMC is king currently (when you consider it as the entire entertainment package it is), but the next successful solution will not be worse and my tagging scheme should still be appropriate. Unfortunately, this whole genres thing will not get resolved without some collaboration or until somebody sets a new standard.