deleting categories in "genre," "artist," etc.?

Hi Jay,

Welcome to Discussions!

If you hit Command+B (or Edit Menu >> Show Browser), 3 columns will come up in your iTunes window: Genre, Artist and Album. I have found that this is the easiest way to condense and remove extraneous genres. Also, if you select more than one song (e.g. all the songs in one useless genre), and click File Menu >> Get Info (or Command+I), you will be able to change the genre for all of them at once.

For Composer, you might be on your own. As far as I know, there is no easier way to change them, other than selecting them all at once, getting info and changing them together.

Hope this helps.

To take off unused categories go to Edit -> View Options... or press Command+J. a selection of categories will appear in checkboxes. Check the ones you want and uncheck what you don't.

Hmmm..
.If I do CMD+B to get the Browser, all I see is an area for Artists, an area for Album and the multi-column view.

I'm using iTunes 5.0 - maybe your method only works for iTunes 4.9 ??

If so, I'd hope there's a similar method for Genre editing in iTunes 5 !!

Peter

The question that has still not been answered is how to remove unneeded genres from within the list. Let's say I create a custom genre called "Reggae/Ska" because I find it more useful than the default "Reggae". With the auto-fill thing that happens, this becomes very inconvenient since I have to type Reggae/ before it catches on that I want the custom category, not the default one. Besides, I know I will never use "Easy Listening" and some of the charming club music subcategories. There should be some way to get rid of them. If there is, I haven't found it documented.

I believe this was what the original poster was getting at too. TIA to anyone who can help,
Doug

Doug:

Go to the Library and click on the Browse button (the big eye icon in the upper right corner). This will now display your music in a split screen format. On the top, you'll have three dividers - Genre, Artist and Album. The bottom section will dislay your library with all of the headings you've picked in View Options.

From the top portion, select the the genre you want to delete. On the bottom section, only those songs which are assigned to that genre will appear. Select all of these songs and change the genre in the Get Info pane (command-I). Once all instances of that genre have been removed from your Library, the genre will disappear from the genre menu.

Only custom genres can be deleted - the preset genres cannot be removed.

As far as the autofill goes, if you just keep typing, you'll overwrite the autofill. Also, you may want to change that genre from Reggae/Ska to Ska/Reggae.
There was a post earlier this week on this same subject - one poster recommended exporting the library and opening in Excel, then changing the genre through search and replace. I wouldn't recommend doing that.

Let us know if you have any questions.

Lita

I've addressed the issue of deleting random and unwanted custom genres below, but to address the issue of artists/composers, the best way to eliminate misspellings is to make sure that all of your tags are correctly spelled in the first place.

One thing I like to do when I have a lot of music by one artist/composer from multiple albums is select all of the relevant tracks, get info and retype the artist's name, ensuring that all entries are correctly spelled, without any leading or trailing spaces.

This should eliminate the misspelling issue for autofill.

Lita

If you have 1 song with a different genre you cannot get rid of it. To remove an unwanted Genre sort your iTunes by Genre. Now you can see all the songs that are associated with a specific genre. Select the songs that have the specific genre that you want to get rid of and CHANGE it to another genre that you want to keep. this can be done with a CMD I and then change the genre. You don't have to do each song 1 at a time. Presto ... the unwanted genre should disappear. If you by chance you remove a genre and want it back then just select the songs that you want to have a new genre and type it in and you will have it back. As others have noted you cannot rremove the default genres.

Ok, so in my Genres field in the browser window, I have all the Genres I chose including the defaults which I can't get rid of...but...when I go to the Get info button to change a genre to one that I"ve created...I have listed about 100 more that I don't use and don't want...these are NOT all listed in my Genre field in the browser...just in the Get info drop down bar for genres. My question is obviously how do I get rid of these? Also why are they listed if they are no used at all and are not factory defaults? Any ideas?

ParadOx:

Thanks for the tips. Gracenotes info often comes with simple misspellings, and weird assignment of genres. I have been laboriously changing them one song at a time. Thanks, again.++