Sortable Sub-Genre With ITunes 11 Using Grouping

Music nuts everywhere have complained that there is no good way to add sub-genres to songs in iTunes.  This guide will show the best way I've found to add sub-genres to an iTunes library in iTunes 11 using grouping.  Sub-genre will even be sortable using the column browser.  This guide was done for the Mac version but the Windows version is probably very similar.

When iTunes is open and selected, choose View/Column Browser/Show Column Browser or hit Command-B on your keyboard.  This will make the column browser visible.  In the music section, column browser can only be shown in playlists or songs views.

If Groupings does not automatically appear in your column browser, again go into View/Column Browser but this time choose Groupings to add it to the browser.  This will make it so you can easily choose to view individual groupings/sub-genres once you have that data entered into your songs.

Right click on any column header in the song browser (not the column browser you just added).  A list will appear: select Grouping.  After doing this, you can easily reposition the grouping column by dragging it's column header.  The second image shows what it looks like when dragging a column.  Now you will be able to quickly and easily view grouping/sub-genre information for individual songs in the song list.

Either right click on a single song or select multiple songs by holding Shift or Command and right-click.  Choose Get Info from the options.  Now you can manually enter in grouping information.    

If you need hep identifying genres/subgenres, I recommend checking out allmusic.com.  They don't have everything, but they have enough for this task.  I recommend having very broad genre categories (ie Rock, Country, Hip Hop/Rap, etc) then more specific groupings/sub-genres (ie Acoustic Rock, Bluegrass, British Rap, etc).  

I hope this guide was helpful.  Now let your OCD go wild on your music library!

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I think this might help some people as well.  Here is a list of genres & sub-genres I use.  I know the list isn't perfect and you are likely to have different types of music than me, but this can be used as a jumping off point if you are having trouble organizing your music:

Blues
- Blues Rock
- Contemporary Blues
- Early Blues

Children's Music
- Children's Music

Classical
- Contemporary
- Gregorian Chant
- Romantic Era

Country
- Alternative Country
- Americana
- Bluegrass
- Comedy
- Contemporary Country
- New Traditionalist
- Outlaw Country
- Pop/Rock
- Skit
- Traditional Country

Folk
- Comedy
- Contemporary Folk
- Folk Rock

Hip Hop/Rap
- Alternative Rap
- British Rap
- Christian Rap
- Comedy
- East Coast Rap
- Gangsta
- Mashup
- Nerdcore
- Old School Rap
- Pop-Rap
- Underground Rap

Holiday
- Christmas
- Halloween

Jazz
- Big Band Swing
- Bop
- Comedy
- Contemporary Jazz
- Electronic
- Lounge
- Other Jazz
- Smooth Jazz

Latin
- Latin Guitar
- Latin Rap
- Latin Rock

R&B
- Comedy
- Contemporary R&B
- Oldies
- Urban Crossover

Reggae
- Caribbean
- Comedy
- Contemporary Reggae
- Pop/Rock
- Roots Reggae

Rock
- Acoustic Rock
- Alternative Metal
- Alternative Rock
- Christian Rock
- Classic Rock
- Comedy
- Electronic
- Emo
- Experimental
- Folk Rock
- Funk Rock
- Goth Rock
- Grunge
- Hardcore Metal
- Hardcore Punk
- Indie Rock
- Industrial
- Mashup
- Metal
- New Wave
- Oldies
- Pop-Punk
- Pop/Hair Metal
- Pop/Rock
- Post-Hardcore
- Post-Punk
- Progressive Metal
- Progressive Rock
- Punk
- Rap Rock/Metal
- Ska
- Southern Rock

Soundtrack
- Film Score
- Musicals/Broadway

World
- German
- Hawaiian
- Indian
- Irish Celtic
- Polka