FS#5035 - Multiple genre tag processing
The Genre field of ID3 can hold more than one genre type. Some people use it for sub-categorizing (e.g. “Rock, Classic”), others - including big web databases like discogs.com - use multiple descriptors for classifying music into multiple categories, like “Latin, Downtempo, Trip-Hop”.
A nice feature would be an option to select a field separator that indicates multiple genres. So, if someone uses subcategories, then comma would mean everything in the Genre field should be interpreted as one genre type. If someone likes multi-genre descriptions better, then the same field would be split up at the separator character, and be interpreted as multiple genres for the same track/disk. If you use both, then you have to use a different field separator, e.g. “Latin/Trip-Hop/Rock, Classic” could mean “Latin” and “Trip-Hop” and “Rock, Classic” are all applied to the same music (given that you selected dash as field separator).
Altogether, the option for selecting a multi-genre field separator would be nice 
Reason for closing: Fixed
Additional comments about closing: Warning: Undefined array key "typography" in /home/rockbox/flyspray/plugins/dokuwiki/inc/parserutils.php on line 371 Warning: Undefined array key "camelcase" in /home/rockbox/flyspray/plugins/dokuwiki/inc/parserutils.php on line 407
Closing all feature requests.
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I would also like to see Tag Cache support files with multiple genre tags. It’s quite useful when searching for specific styles in broad categories. Foobar2000 allows you to apply multiple genres to a file with
as a seperator. When you look at the ID3 info of a file tagged in this manner it shows each genre you added in its own “GENRE=” field. Foobar2000’s playlist can then be formatted to detect and seperate multiple genres with commas. This might be a better alternative to fitting multiple genres into one field.
Another vote of support for multiple genres
As well, Vorbis comments can have multiple GENRE lines, if this gets implemented, it probably should be for Vorbis comments as well.
Foobar2000 also has the opton to “add value”. It places a “; “(including the space) after the first genre before adding the second genre. If you were to view the genre tag, it would show as e.g. “Grunge; Rock”. If you opened it up in Winamp, then it would show only the first genre “Grunge”.
This method is much more standarised than using
as a seperator. ID3-TagIT 3 and foobar2000 both use this method(foobar200 even says to use ; to separate multiple calues). Winamp only reads the first one(it doesn’t display “Grunge; Rock”, but “Grunge”. If you use
to separate, then winamp displays “Grunge\\Rock”. The semicolon was meant to separate multiple values, not the \\.
Forgot to say: I want this feature badly too.
Interestingly, the ID3 standard says to use a null-character to seperate multiple genres (http://www.id3.org/id3v2.4.0-frames.txt 4.2.3). Why is Foobar and others not doing this?
maybe the “; " is only foobar’s way of representing the ‘\\0’ to the user? I can’t see any other explanation – why does winamp truncate everything after the “; “? Maybe someone who uses winamp and foobar could try this. Also, does foobar allow removing the space after the semcolon separately? I think it also would be interesting how winamp behaves if the first genre has a ; in it.
Also we must not confuse slash and backslash – the OP suggests the slash / be used as a separator. As I don’t use multiple genres I have no idea what’s common there.
Oh no, that would be the sane way. Not something Foobar is keen on doing. In fact, it translates the ; into \\r\\n, which is pretty much the most horrible hack I have ever heard of.
First of all, the standard says to use null, second of all, the standard says to NEVER EVER use \\r\\n, even in frames that allow multiline values, only \\n.
Another way that Foobar is broken. Jeebus Krist, what on earth was whoever did this thinking?!
I just added multiple genres to a mp3 file using foobar2000 and opened the resulting file with a hex editor. The delimiter actually *is* a NULL byte, it’s just foobar presenting them as semicolons. So the semicolon itself is *not* the delimiter (speaking on file base)!
I retract my words. Apparently it was my editor playing tricks on me, it is indeed a null byte. Good job on this one, Foobar.
I would also like this feature to be implemented. It would help me out a lot…
foobar2000 seperates multiple genres with a null-character, when writing ID3 or APEv2 Tags
rockbox reads only the first genre out of these tags
Vorbis comments and mp4/m4a metadata can have multiple genre tag fields.. so there’s no need for a null-character
rockbox reads only the last genre out of vorbis comments and no genre at all out of mp4/m4a metadata when multiple genres are present
I tested this with files I created with foobar2000, so things might be different with other files out there in the wild
I think rockbox should at least display all genres in WPS