iTunes Music Store Adds New Reggae and Comedy Genres

I was glad to see that the iTunes Music Store has recently added two new genres to their growing catalog of downloadable music.

The first one that caught my eye was the long needed addition of a Reggae genre. I’m sure fans of the music will be glad to know that initial searches for Burning Spear and Lee “Scratch” Perry came up very successful (over 20 albums each!) and there appear to be a wide variety of artists and albums ready for discovery. The front page of the section has the artists broken out into four main categories: Roots; Ska, Rocksteady & Lovers’ Rock; Dub; and Deejay and Dancehall. I was very impressed by the organization and variety presented and anticipate spending a lot of time here in the future.

The second new addition is a Comedy genre. Here you can find the comedic stylings of stand-up comedians like Dane Cook and Chris Rock alongside musical comedy legends like “Weird Al” Yankovic (fun fact, Weird Al was the first live show I ever went to). Also ripe for the picking are a variety of audiobooks. Steve Martin, Jerry Seinfeld and George Carlin are all here as well as one of my all-time favorites David Sedaris.

I’m glad to see the iTunes Music Store branching out to other genres and musical styles. Those “World” and “Vocal” categories were getting a little long in the tooth if you ask me.