As time goes, iTunes music libraries keep getting larger and larger. As you add songs and videos to the library, it can get unmanageable. One technique for organizing your iTunes library is to simplify and codify the genres that are used on the tracks.

iTunes, when you stick a CD into your computer, will look up the metadata about the album or compilation from a commercial database service from Gracenote, which was known as CDDB (or CD Database) back in the day. Gracenote will match the table of contents of your CD against its database and produce the information about the album if it finds a match.

Gracenote uses a specific list of music genres for its metadata that can be useful in giving a bit of shape to the wide range of metadata found in songs downloaded from outside sources. There’s not much point in getting picky about sub-genres and that sort of thing, but working from a basic list of genres can help to normalize the metadata in your iTunes library.

The main advantage to using the following genre list is that it then becomes very easy to create smart playlists based off of this by either including or excluding certain genres. For an example, some people may want a playlist that includes everything except Holiday music. Or they may create a playlist just for Classical.

The point though is not that this is a comprehensive or exhaustive list, but rather that it’s a starting point for organizing an otherwise unwieldy iTunes music library. You’ll probably want to add to the list genres that may not fit the classification, Mashup for example.

It’s an easy thing to change the genre on many songs. Create a playlist that sorts by existing genre data. You can find out what genres are in your music library by doing a Get Info on any song and then clicking the dropdown menu for the genre of that song. So create a playlist that grabs some genres that fit under, say, Alternative & Punk. Then highlight a bunch of songs together and do a Get Info and change the genre for all of those songs. In my case, it took less than an hour to get my 20,000 song library into shape.

So here is the list of genres. There is also a list of subgenres, which can be helpful sometimes in determining what category something fits into, and I’ll provide that tomorrow. But for now, the 25 top level genres:

• Alternative & Punk
• Books & Spoken
• Blues
• Children’s Music
• Classical
• Country
• Data
• Easy Listening
• Electronica/Dance
• Folk
• Gospel & Religious
• Hip Hop/Rap
• Holiday
• Industrial
• Jazz
• Latin
• Metal
• New Age
• Pop
• Reggae
• R&B
• Rock
• Soundtrack
• Unclassifiable
• World

Notes: You can safely ignore the Data genre probably. Also, it’s a little strange that Industrial gets listed as a genre and not as a subgenre of Alternative & Punk. Industrial is great – or at least it was in the ’80s & ’90s, but it seems a little out of place. It took me less than an hour to get the wildly messy data in my 20,000+ song library into shape using that list as a general guide. Now where creating genre playlists was difficult in the past, it has become much easier.

Update: As promised, here is a list using those same genres as guides but with subgenre information. Hopefully this will help in your classification.

Alternative & Punk Ambient/Dream Pop Art Rock Art-Folk Avant Rock Brit Pop Emo Experimental General Alternative General Punk Hardcore Punk Indie Lo-Fi/Garage Old School Punk Pop-Punk Post-Punk Power Pop Rap Metal Riot Grrrl/Queercore Straight Edge Punk Books & Spoken Comedy General Books General Spoken Poetry Politics Religion Short Stories Spoken Word Stories/Fairytales Blues Acoustic Blues Blues Rock Electric Blues General Blues Japanese Blues Children’s Music General Children’s Music Japanese Children’s Song (Doyo) Classical Baroque Chamber Music Choral Classical Guitar Contemporary Ensembles General Classical Japanese Classical Medieval Opera Romantic Era Piano Renaissance Era Strings Country Alternative Country Bluegrass Contemporary Country Country Blues General Country Rockabilly Traditional Country Data Applications Games General Data Japanese Karaoke Karaoke Operating Systems Easy Listening Bachelor Pad General Easy Listening Lounge Love Songs Mood Music Pop Vocals Electronica/Dance Acid House Acid Jazz Ambient Electronica Ambient Trance Big Beat Club Dance Dark Techno/Darkwave Deep House Detroit Techno Drum n’ Bass/Jungle Electro Electronica Gabber Garage General Dance General Electronic General House General Techno General Trance Happy House Hard Trance/Acid Hardcore Techno Illbient Industrial Dance Minimalist Experimental Progressive House Progressive/Dream Rave Music Tech Trance Tribal House Trip Hop Turntablism Folk Contemporary Folk General Folk Traditional Folk Gospel & Religious Christian Pop Christian Rap Christian Rock General Religious General Christian Gospel Hip Hop/Rap Bass Assault East Coast Rap Foreign Rap Freestyle Rap Gangsta General Hip Hop General Rap Hardcore Rap Horrorcore Old School Hip Hop Southern Rap Underground Rap West Coast Rap

Holiday Chanukka Christmas General Holiday Halloween Industrial General Industrial Hardcore Industrial Minimal/Noise Old School Industrial Jazz Ballroom Big Band Swing Bop Cool/West Coast Jazz Dixieland/New Orleans Jazz Free/Avant Jazz Fusion General Jazz Japanese Fusion Japanese Jazz Jazz Vocals Latin Ragtime Smooth Jazz Swing Revival Latin Afro-Cuban Brazillian General Latin Latin Pop Latin Rock Mexican Ranchero Salsa/Merengue South/Central American Spanish/Portugese Tejano/Norteno Tropical/Samba Metal Alternative Metal Black/Death Metal General Metal Gothic Metal Grindcore Hardcore Metal Heavy Metal Pop/Hair Metal Progressive Metal Thrash/Speed Metal New Age Ambient New Age Environmental Music General New Age Meditation Music Pop Acoustic Pop Disco European Pop General Pop Japanese Pop Teen Pop Reggae Dancehall Dub General Reggae Ragga Ska/Rock Steady R&B Funk General R&B Motown Soul Urban Crossover Rock Classic Rock Folk Rock Funk Rock General Rock Goth Rock Grunge Hard Rock Instrumental Rock Jam Bands Japanese Rock New Wave Progressive Rock Psychedelic Rock Rock & Roll Ska Revival/3rd Wave Soft Rock Southern Rock Surf Rock Soundtrack Adult Film/Erotica Anime Film Score Film Soundtrack Game General Soundtrack Japanese General Soundtrack Musicals/Broadway Television Score Television Soundtrack Unclassifiable General Unclassifiable Japanese Unclassifiable World Aboriginal Australian/Didjeridu African Asian Caribbean Central Asian Classical Indian Eastern European Flamenco/Gypsy French General Celtic General World German Hawaiian Indian Subcontinent Irish Celtic Japanese Enka Japanese Folk Japanese Traditional (Minzoku) Jewish/Israeli Klezmer Middle East/Arabic Native American Oceania Polka Québécois Scandinavian Western European World Fusion Zydeco/Cajun