How Do I Remove Unused Genres in iTunes Genre List?

That's how it works already. Turn on the column browser, display Genres, select a genre you'd like to remove, select all the tracks with that genre, get info. change the genre to something else. The genre will no longer be listed in the column browser.

There are, however, around 150 built-in genres that will still be listed in the Get Info. genre selection box. If you'd like to reduce this list further you can do so by editing the Localizable.strings file (in C:\Program Files\iTunes\iTunes.Resources\en.lproj or ...\en_GB.lproj for US or UK English). Back it up first and use something like Notepad++. Simply comment out the genres you don't want, and provided none of your tracks have those genres, they will disappear from the list.

tt2

and what about all those non-standard genres which seem to linger around even when you only have one song in your library?

iTunes seems to be storing that information somewhere other than just by looking at the songs in your library.

How exaclty can you force iTunes to forget about all the old garbage?

Create a smart playlist with the rule Genre is <non-standard genre that you want to remove>. Any hits? If so edit them. If not post back the genre in question and I'll check to see if it is one of the pre-built list or if I can think of anywhere else that the data might be cached.

tt2

I didn't get a chance to try your fix.

While dealing with another music sync issue (on my iPhone 4S), however, I did a full phone wipe.

After syncing up again with my iPhone, the old pesky non-standard genres are gone.

Based on other threads, it seems the iTunes has some trouble updating data or removing songs no longer chosen to be synced. That could be a contributing factor here.

Ah you didn't mention they were on your phone, and yes there do seem to be some housekeeping issues, dating back to the iOS 5 upgrade as far as I can tell. Hopefully a full wipe will have fixed those for good.

I think I've finally got rid of all of my zombie podcasts and iTunes U episodes that wouldn't die. I kept deleting duplicates from iTunes and trying to work out what was bringing them back to life. Each time I synced instead of being deleted from the device they would be copied over to iTunes again during the sync.

tt2

OK...after an HOUR of googling it I FOUND OUT HOW TO DO IT!

First- Open your itunes and click on the left MUSIC so that it shows ALL of your music.

NOW, go to the search tab up in the upper right hand corner of the itunes.

Type in the genre you do not want and hit search.

In the search results, look in the column GENRE in your itunes music. Everything that has that Genre will show up.

Choose ALL of them that have that Genre (highlight) right click and chose GET INFO.

Change the Genre of all of them to something else that you want...and then click OK.

NOW, when you go to your Genre list next time, that Genre you did not want WILL BE GONE!

BELIEVE ME...IT WORKS!!!!!

Sadly, it doesn't work. I have the Genre column browser up, and it does not show a single 'Hip-hop' song. Nevertheless, when I go to 'Get Info', my Genre drop-down contains 'Hip-Hop', 'Hip-Hop/Rap', and 'Hip Hop/Rap'.

I'm going to try modifying my 'Localizable.strings' file, as previously suggested; that sounds promising.

I could not do this with my usual text editor (it corrupted the file somehow, but I'd backed it up), but using Notepad++, as suggested above, I was able to remove the offending genres. Thank you, turingtest2. I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords.

(Note: Though I never saw 'Hip-Hop/Rap' in the .strings file, it was nonetheless removed when I commented out the others. I'm guessing there's a little more logic going on here, so edit the file with care.)

As you say "Hip-Hip/Rap" isn't in that list. The list of active genres is probably rebuilt on start-up, so having cleaned out all the "Hip-Hop/Rap" entries you might have needed to restart iTunes to purge it.

tt2

When looking at the list in editor...there are many there that don't show up in the genre list. How to make sure they don't show up? Like um, **** groove or death metal. LOL.

Message was edited by: MayhemJim

Thanks, remnant53 for your simple solution that doesn't involve editing any program text. It does does work as long as you add one step at the end - after making the changes close down iTunes and re-open it to get rid of the unwanted genres.

I got the list of genres from the above mentioned Localizable.strings file - although i dont plan to edit it. Just so that I know I am using the default ones as much as possible, to reduce the duplications in the list. I.e I will change info on all songs marked as Rock/Pop to either Rock or Pop, since neither of those is going to disappear from the list Note there are 3 lists, one marked 'Genres', one marked 'Reduced Genres' and one marked CDText Genres. Im not sure yet what the difference is, but i suspect we are only interested in the Reduced Genres list as this matches the default set on the drop down in Info.

shame though.. "PornGroove" would have been one worth looking out for! 🙂

For info:

/* ===== Genres ===== */

"9200.001" = "Blues";

"9200.002" = "Classic Rock";

"9200.003" = "Country";

"9200.004" = "Dance";

"9200.005" = "Disco";

"9200.006" = "Funk";

"9200.007" = "Grunge";

"9200.008" = "Hip-Hop";

"9200.009" = "Jazz";

"9200.010" = "Metal";

"9200.011" = "New Age";

"9200.012" = "Oldies";

"9200.013" = "Other";

"9200.014" = "Pop";

"9200.015" = "R&B";

"9200.016" = "Rap";

"9200.017" = "Reggae";

"9200.018" = "Rock";

"9200.019" = "Techno";

"9200.020" = "Industrial";

"9200.021" = "Alternative";

"9200.022" = "Ska";

"9200.023" = "Death Metal";

"9200.024" = "Pranks";

"9200.025" = "Soundtrack";

"9200.026" = "Euro-Techno";

"9200.027" = "Ambient";

"9200.028" = "Trip-Hop";

"9200.029" = "Vocal";

"9200.030" = "Jazz+Funk";

"9200.031" = "Fusion";

"9200.032" = "Trance";

"9200.033" = "Classical";

"9200.034" = "Instrumental";

"9200.035" = "Acid";

"9200.036" = "House";

"9200.037" = "Game";

"9200.038" = "Sound Clip";

"9200.039" = "Gospel";

"9200.040" = "Noise";

"9200.041" = "AlternRock";

"9200.042" = "Bass";

"9200.043" = "Soul";

"9200.044" = "Punk";

"9200.045" = "Space";

"9200.046" = "Meditative";

"9200.047" = "Instrumental Pop";

"9200.048" = "Instrumental Rock";

"9200.049" = "Ethnic";

"9200.050" = "Gothic";

"9200.051" = "Darkwave";

"9200.052" = "Techno-Industrial";

"9200.053" = "Electronic";

"9200.054" = "Pop-Folk";

"9200.055" = "Eurodance";

"9200.056" = "Dream";

"9200.057" = "Southern Rock";

"9200.058" = "Comedy";

"9200.059" = "Cult";

"9200.060" = "Gangsta";

"9200.061" = "Top 40";

"9200.062" = "Christian Rap";

"9200.063" = "Pop/Funk";

"9200.064" = "Jungle";

"9200.065" = "Native American";

"9200.066" = "Cabaret";

"9200.067" = "New Wave";

"9200.068" = "Psychedelic";

"9200.069" = "Rave";

"9200.070" = "Showtunes";

"9200.071" = "Trailer";

"9200.072" = "Lo-Fi";

"9200.073" = "Tribal";

"9200.074" = "Acid Punk";

"9200.075" = "Acid Jazz";

"9200.076" = "Polka";

"9200.077" = "Retro";

"9200.078" = "Musical";

"9200.079" = "Rock & Roll";

"9200.080" = "Hard Rock";

"9200.081" = "Folk";

"9200.082" = "Folk-Rock";

"9200.083" = "National Folk";

"9200.084" = "Swing";

"9200.085" = "Fast Fusion";

"9200.086" = "Bebop";

"9200.087" = "Latin";

"9200.088" = "Revival";

"9200.089" = "Celtic";

"9200.090" = "Bluegrass";

"9200.091" = "Avant-garde";

"9200.092" = "Gothic Rock";

"9200.093" = "Progressive Rock";

"9200.094" = "Psychedelic Rock";

"9200.095" = "Symphonic Rock";

"9200.096" = "Slow Rock";

"9200.097" = "Big Band";

"9200.098" = "Chorus";

"9200.099" = "Easy Listening";

"9200.100" = "Acoustic";

"9200.101" = "Humour";

"9200.102" = "Speech";

"9200.103" = "Chanson";

"9200.104" = "Opera";

"9200.105" = "Chamber Music";

"9200.106" = "Sonata";

"9200.107" = "Symphony";

"9200.108" = "Booty Bass";

"9200.109" = "Primus";

"9200.110" = "**** Groove";

"9200.111" = "Satire";

"9200.112" = "Slow Jam";

"9200.113" = "Club";

"9200.114" = "Tango";

"9200.115" = "Samba";

"9200.116" = "Folklore";

"9200.117" = "Ballad";

"9200.118" = "Power Ballad";

"9200.119" = "Rhythmic Soul";

"9200.120" = "Freestyle";

"9200.121" = "Duet";

"9200.122" = "Punk Rock";

"9200.123" = "Drum Solo";

"9200.124" = "A Capella";

"9200.125" = "Euro-House";

"9200.126" = "Dance Hall";

/* ===== Reduced Genres ===== */

"9201.001" = "Alternative";

"9201.002" = "Books & Spoken";

"9201.003" = "Blues/R&B";

"9201.004" = "Children’s Music";

"9201.005" = "Classical";

"9201.006" = "Country";

"9201.007" = "Dance";

"9201.008" = "Easy Listening";

"9201.009" = "Electronic";

"9201.010" = "Folk";

"9201.011" = "House";

"9201.012" = "Industrial";

"9201.013" = "Techno";

"9201.014" = "Trance";

"9201.015" = "Hip-Hop/Rap";

"9201.016" = "Holiday";

"9201.017" = "Jazz";

"9201.018" = "New Age";

"9201.019" = "Pop";

"9201.020" = "Religious";

"9201.021" = "Rock";

"9201.022" = "Soundtrack";

"9201.023" = "Unclassifiable";

"9201.024" = "World";

/* ===== CDText Genres ===== */

"9202.001" = "Undefined";

"9202.002" = "Adult Contemporary";

"9202.003" = "Alternative Rock";

"9202.004" = "Children’s Music";

"9202.005" = "Classical";

"9202.006" = "Contemporary Christian";

"9202.007" = "Country";

"9202.008" = "Dance";

"9202.009" = "Easy Listening";

"9202.010" = "Erotic";

"9202.011" = "Folk";

"9202.012" = "Gospel";

"9202.013" = "Hip-Hop";

"9202.014" = "Jazz";

"9202.015" = "Latin";

"9202.016" = "Musical";

"9202.017" = "New Age";

"9202.018" = "Opera";

"9202.019" = "Operetta";

"9202.020" = "Pop Music";

"9202.021" = "RAP";

"9202.022" = "Reggae";

"9202.023" = "Rock Music";

"9202.024" = "Rhythm & Blues";

"9202.025" = "Sound Effects";

"9202.026" = "Sound Track";

"9202.027" = "Spoken Word";

"9202.028" = "World Music";

/* ===== Genre Menu Strings ===== */

hope this is helpful - its what i was looking for and couldnt find elsewhere..

I had the same question. Dont know if you still needed an answer but,

I found this very helpful > http://www.macworld.com/article/1143051/edit_iTunes_genres.html

Im not done yet but so far ive gone from 122 genres to 81 =]

One More Possible Solution

I had the same problem of unwanted, non-standard genres like "gay" and "ambient downtempo electronica breakbeat drum and bass idm dub chill psychadelic electronic" (sic) showing up in the Get Info Genre dropdown list. I had no songs with those genres, and found nothing when I did a search on that genre for a Smart Playlist. I checked the Localizable.strings file, and they weren't listed there either.

I finally found the solution when I checked my Fave Radio playlist. There were 3 items listed there that I listened to on LastFM years ago, and the genres were coming from those 3 items. I deleted them from the playlist, and the genres disappeared from my dropdown.

It works! Thanks = )