Arthur

I had to look this up ("developer, developer"): in ID3v1 music genres are stored as integer fields, where numbers refer to the fixed set of music styles you mention in your post. In the ID3v2 standard, music genres are stored as text fields (strings) [see also the enlightening Wikipedia entry @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id3 ]

Problem is, of course, nobody really uses ID3v2 nowadays, so we're stuck with a system that doesn't even allow my classical musical preferences to be categorized appropriately...

Tanya

I was really more amused by the very specific tastes that list catered to -- as if it were just one person's list of genres from their collection. Hmmm

Although that genre list is obsolete, they repeat it in the most recent ID3V2 spec.

The FAQ says, "Q: Could you add the genre X to the genre list?
No. The ID3v1 genre list is obsolete and inconsistent and was no good to begin with. All genres above 79 has been added by Nullsoft and is not really part of the "ID3v1 standard", if such thing existed."

I love the note at the top of the FAQ! "This is a 'true' frequently asked questions list (as opposed to list-of-things-I-think-you-should-know named as FAQ)."

I hate it when a new site insists on having an FAQ. Obviously there haven't been any Q's yet and writing the help section as just an enormous list of imagined Q's is a bit lazy.

Arthur

I was really more amused by the very specific tastes that list catered to

Hee. I was looking at it from a programmer's view: I thought it was rather odd to design a format with a fixed (or rather, limited) set of music genres. Obviously, the programmer(s)/designer(s) of the initial ID3 standard had a limited mindset or music taste...