Pre-populate Genres from a List

Lexicon Questions & Help
1

Hi there,

I’m new to Lexicon for about a little over two weeks. Throughout that entire period, I’ve spend an excessive amount of time in it to see if I could make it the default go-to program for my music tagging needs. I’m using the demo currently. So, I also want to see if its worth pony up $17 for a subscription.

I think by now I’ve used and is familiar with just about all the software out there that have tagging capabilities (MP3Tag, Mediamonkey, Beatunes, Tag&Rename, TagScanner, OneTagger, Mixed in Key, etc…). I’d say by far Lexicon has the best interface with a pretty decent set of features and easy navigation. So, I got excited about finding it. Yet, there’s an implementation (or lack of) that confuses the heck out of me on how it is implemented in the program: TAGS!

Now, I’m not sure if it’s there’s part of its function that’s turned off because I’m on the demo? But TAGS! Yes, this feature got me so hype when I saw the panel and how I can vastly build a set of tags to add to my tracks. One of the category I thought of building in the Tags section came default with the program, and it’s the “Genre” category. I was like… YES! Well, I went to work on it and expand it by adding my whole list of customized genres as I like to have them appeared in Serato; i.e., House/Soulful House, Hip-Hop/Trap, Latin/Reggaeton, and so on…
However, I got so confused that when I went to to try to apply those genres to the Genre field, I couldn’t use those tags on it at all; The option doesn’t exist. Worst, the other feature related to Genres in Lexicon is a “Genre Cleanup” where I can only make a New Genre out of existing genres that it replaces. So, if I get it right, currently, a user can’t technically add their own pre-build list of Genres in Lexicon like it exist in the Tags area, right?
That totally threw me off because I’m thinking, why as a user, would I spend time to build a genres list in the “Tags” area and not being able to apply them to the field that it should match: The Genre field?

I mean, sorry if I’m wrong on this. To be fair, I’m on the demo. So, I can’t really even apply the tags. So, I got to ask just a few questions:
1- Where do those tags in the TAGS section go after they are applied?
2- Would it be hard to expand the “Genre Cleanup” to allow us to add to the Genres that are already listed in that section? I mean, NOT by having to [rename] but by totally add new ones without editing any existing ones?

In a conversation here: Find tags feature The OP somehow made the same argument that I’m thinking about now.
He noted this:

Isn’t it possible then to add all genres found to Lexicon tags instead? (to genres category).
Then you could choose which one you use as id3 genre tag.

Also this:

OK, well I’m getting confused about the purpose of Lexicon tags… to me it’s most useful to have multiple tags per category, that’s what a tagging system is made for i would say…

Well, I arrived at the same conclusion when it comes to how Tags and the Genre fields are not playing nice with each other. I think it would be logical that they do!
I mean, I guess I’ll end this with a “pretty please” request? If there’s no way to update Lexicon where I can apply the options in the Tags to the Genre field, then can you please add a panel (or something) where the user can build a Genre list and pick whichever genres to apply just like the TAGS panel we can click an empty area in the Genre field to make it come up?

Well, I hope that all makes sense.

As you can see here, I’ve spent a good amount of time to input all those tags for the Genres and sub-genres. I hope I can get to use them eventually.

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Thanks for everything!

2

The Genre field is just a text field. It exists because all DJ apps have it and ID3 tags also have it.

Tags are completely custom tags you can add to all your tracks. Even the “Genre” category has nothing to do with the Genre field. The only “link” between them is on the Genre Cleanup page where you can import all your genre text fields into your genre tag category.

You can apply tags by showing the Tags column (or press the Tags hotkey) in the main track browser.

3

I’m having a similar-ish problem. I want a way to automatically add genres to custom tags that I’ve created if those same tags are from Beatport, MusicBrainz, or Discogs. Similar to the “Find Tags and Album Art” feature, but Genres->Custom Tags.

4

Use the import to tags button on the Genre Cleanup page

5

@Christiaan That was helpful. Thank you. It got me some of the way there, but not all the way.

I’m noticing that a given song doesn’t belong to a single genre. That’s a misnomer. The genre field is almost unfair. Because it’s a single field, it doesn’t capture the breadth of the genres and sub-genres a song could belong to.

It’s for this reason, I absolutely love the custom tag field. @DarkMain I love your screen cap of how you’ve handled custom tags. Such an amazing system you’ve created. I’ve found myself being inspired by it. I’ve expanded the genres and sub-genres, tagging songs as I import them into my library and creating smart lists based on a wide range of tags. I’d love to connect and get the full list from you at your convenience.

When I tag a song, I run it through Chosic and add the custom tags, accordingly. This is going to build me sooooo many rich smart playlists in the future, as I build out my library.

It would be so cool if Lexicon DJ or any DJ management tooling gave me the ability to connect to a 3rd party, like Chosic, or just do what Chosic does and connect to Spotify’s API to query the genres/sub-genres and then apply those genres as custom tags.

Loving this software so much. As a product manager for a design system, I can really appreciate Lexicon DJ’s attention to system’s thinking when designing this product. My hat’s off to your product team.

6

Lexicon grabs the genre from Spotify with Find Tags, but it’s just one genre. Spotify’s genres aren’t very good, because they are generic and apply to the artist so it’s actually difficult to determine what genre a track is if the artist has multiple genres.

Beatport and Discogs do a better job at genres. Beatport is good at EDM, if you agree with their genres. For Discogs, I recently changed it to return the subgenre so you may want to try that source in Find Tags.

Cheers!

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