iTunes genres

For the past few years, I have been working to rebuild my music collection in iTunes. By that I mean getting pretty much everything that I have ever enjoyed (which runs the gamut from avant-garde to thrash, from folk to electronic, from classic rock to classical, and everything in-between). During this time, I discovered smart playlists, and I set to work on building genre playlists, so I could get a good random mix when I'm out and about. What I found was that the built-in genres were too broad (it just doesn't sound right when Ministry is followed by Yes imho). So, after some experimentation, I found a set of genres that seems to work, and I built my playlists around them. Here is a quick sampling of the genres that my Metal Hits playlist picks up for example:

• Extreme Metal (Living Sacrifice, Megadeth, Tourniquet, etc.)
• Grunge Metal (Alice In Chains, Rose, Soundgarden, etc.)
• Industrial Metal (Brainchild, KMFDM, Ministry, etc.)
• Progressive Metal (Believer, Iron Maiden, Saviour Machine, etc.)
• Heavy Metal (everything else, like Black Sabbath, Stavesacre, Stryper, etc.)

Then I have other playlists, like Progressive (picks up progressive rock & metal), and Industrial (picks up industrial electronic & metal), etc. This allows songs to show up on multiple smart genre playlists. It's still a work in progress, but it seems to be working well enough for now.