The other thing is that I've heard people whingeing and whining that earbuds don't fit their ears, and it turns out I have one ear that wears an earbud (left) and one that does not (right), so I know the joy of the earbud, but cruelly, have to be one of those folks sporting old school headphones anyway.

If you rip music from CDs, and get the tag info from CDDB, you'll find a lot of weird and/or jokey genre tags. Most of the Ween songs I ever ripped showed up as "Gospel" until I changed them.

I hate the earbuds. And I especially don't know how people can run with them. They would fall out every step if I tried to wear them while running. If I listened to music while running.

The genre thing I find odd too. Especially when the same band comes up with different genres.

Genres are just tags, poorly implemented. ;-)

Seriously, use iTunes to change 'em so they make sense to you. But if you download, you'll find you always have weird genre tags.

Also, the MusicBrainz program always screws up my genre tags to things like "107". I have about 150 genres in my iTunes and use for about 15.

when ipods were still relatively new I decided I didn't want to advertise that I had one and wore my regular $20 sony, radioshack headphones. I think I get better sound out of them anyway and I felt a little safer knowing that people might think it was a CD player in my bag/pocket.

I assume you got the video ipod? i'm jealous if that's the case. we are going to get a new one soon (waiting for macexpo this tuesday) because we want a video capable ipod so bad.

Get better earbuds/headphones. The things that ship with most players are good for interim use only. The Sony MDR-EX71 is well regarded, and they come with 3 different sized pads. I liked the fit of the '71s more than the Etymotic ER-6i's I recently bought. (My Sonys died after 2 years hard use, and the Etys were available while I was traveling)

I like MP3Tag for setting genre & other tags on my PC.

When I'm not exercising I use my over the ear Sennheiser PX100's. When I'm riding my bike or something I use some Sony in the ear thingies that came with different sized rubber dealies so you could fit your ears with them. I'm like you, rainbaby, and have 2 different sized earholes.

Sorry about all the technical jargon (thingies, dealies), I do know this is a newbie thread.

and yah, genres suck, especially if lots of your music crosses over. Good thing is you can change the genres by going to get info for the song, and changing it in there. Slow, but it works. I used to sort my CDs by mood, so I had angry music, mellow music, music when I was depressed, etc.

Oh, and my Sonys are EX51s. They were under 20 bucks, and sound good enough when I'm riding rollers or whatever.

oh, since Triode posted a link to an mp3tagger, i'll go ahead and put a link to my fav. Tag&Rename. It's really, really good at tagging a bunch of files at once, or an album at a time, etc.

I think it's just PC.

Meh, genres in iTunes suck - I suspect that CDDB has a really limited selection and people have to pick a best fit, although it usually is anything but that. Almost everything I rip turns up as "alternative/punk" - even Tori Amos! Only once in memory has it been correct - it deemed A Hawk And A Hacksaw to be "unclassifiable" which is pretty spot-on. Not sure about the PC, but on the Mac you can type into the grenre drop down and type your own in.

gaspode - I've been running with iPods for about 2.5 years now and have'nt had a problem with the buds.

Not sure about the PC, but on the Mac you can type into the grenre drop down and type your own in.

I'm think that's on PC also, but I think it's only iTunes specific. Meaning it doesn't actually tag the mp3's for other mp3 players to utilize. However, I'm sure it's not a big deal!

My experience is that, when you change tags in iTunes, it chages the actual file tags, so they show up that way when you move the files around. At least, when I move files from one PC to another, the second computer shows the new tags in iTunes. I always thought that the problems with incorrect genre tags was probably caused by different players using a different code number for the tags, so they get mixed up if there is a (wrong) match in the database. If there was no match, the tag would show as blank. Of course, I have been know to talk through my arse, too.

The original ID3 spec had a pre-defined list of genres which each had a code number, and then the genre was specified in the MP3 file using that code number. (Winamp then added several more genre codes to the official list). The version which is currently most widely implemented, ID3v2, allows free text for the genre. That's why you sometimes get problems with genres when you're dealing with older files or players.

I don't know for certain, but I'd wager that iTunes uses the more modern standard, and just stores the genre as free text in the MP3 file.

Seconding the Sonys--and they were a big help when I couldn't find my earplanes on the flight back from Amsterdam.

For all of your headphone needs.

Does freedb still use the limited list, or does freedb's very-limited genre list serve some other purpose?