itunes: grouping and composer tags

jonnyboy

hey all,



i have been organising my itunes collection a lot more lately and really getting the hang of some of the great playlisting features to get everything just how i want it, but i am a little bit confused by two things: the grouping and composer tags. i guess the composer tag is a little less confusing... i guess you might have a mozart piece performed by a particular artist and so mozart would be the composer and the performer would be the artist...



but what about grouping? how is this supposed to be used? if someone could suggest a constructive way of using this tag it might also benefit me.



thanks!

kishan

I have used grouping as a sub-genre tag. For example, I might have a lot of songs in a "rock" genre, but could group various songs into light rock, classic rock, heavy metal, etc. I like this approach because it limits the number of genres that I have to create.



On the other hand, grouping could be used to tie together songs across genres as a super-genre tag.



There is no one right way to use the tags beyond artist, title and album. In my own library, for example, there are plenty of songs for which I leave the grouping blank. If it doesn't serve any purpose, you might consider leaving it blank.

shetline

The "official" use for the Grouping tag is to do things like group related tracks of a piece of music (a "work") which spans multiple tracks, like all of the movements in a concerto. Grouping is a classification level higher than song or track, but lower than album or disc.



Here's an example from the iTunes Music Store (link to a recording of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos 1-3):



http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/M...6&s=143441



Notice the hide/reveal triangles? The ADD WORK buttons? (Probably BUY WORK buttons if you do one-click buying instead using the shopping cart option like I do.) Apple only seems to honor a special meaning for the Grouping tag in the Music Store, and not elsewhere in iTunes or on your iPod -- so, at least for now, you're free to use the tag for anything you want.

oldsystem

Here's the kicker: Can a Grouping span multiple CDs that consist of 1 Album and maintain logical order??