With the release of iTunes 8 various features have been updated, introduced and unfortunately removed.  The ability to toggle the genre column on and off in list view with the browser open is indeed one of them.  I came across this solution on Macosxhints.com. It will give you the ability to remove the genre column and regain your artist/album space. In the terminal type: If you so choose to reverse this action you can do so by typing the same text into the terminal but change the ending from FALSE to TRUE.