So my iTunes updated itself last night (and in the process bricked both of my optical drives - I had to do some googling to sort that out), and apparently it has a new feature, called the Genius. It’s supposed to recommend music based on a song you have chosen. Anyway, I question its genius status. Under “top songs you are missing” it frequently shows songs that I already have, and its recommendations are often bizarre.
I selected “Mercedes Benz” by Janis Joplin, and the so-called genius recommended an album called Austropop Kult by Stefanie Werger. Apparently the connection is that that album contains a version of Mercedes Benz; the rest of the album is German-language pop. So I was curious enough to listen to the sample snippet, and this is what I heard, in a badly-faked American accent:
“I went for my livery”? What? I guess I can’t blame that on the genius, but still, “I went for my livery”?
Yes. As more and more users opt-in to the genius feature, it gathers more data as to how people are listening to music, and will get smarter and smarter. Give it time, it’s new.
I’ve been hiding the genius sidebar but I’ve used some of the playlists it’s made up from the library based on a particular song. If you haven’t tried it, you highlight the song and press the genius symbol in the lower right-hand corner, it returns a playlist based on that song. Some of them have been pretty good.
Yeh, I’ve been using it. It gets pretty close to the “base” song, but even when it misses, that’s okay. It’s a nice feature if you like to shuffle your music but want to keep it within a certain mood.
So I finally decided to check out the new itunes/genius. And the friggin thing doesn’t even work with my ipod!!! It only works with songs on my computer’s harddrive, of which I have none. Man, what a waste…Apple still has the mentality that everybody uses auto sync and therefore MUST have a 1:1 mirror on their harddrive?
Ditto that. The genius sidebar isn’t any different than the old music recommendation thing that was at the bottom. The real innovation is the genius playlist creator. It’s come up with some interesting ideas for me.
It works fine with my ipod. Like any playlist (other than on the go), I have to create the playlist on the computer first and sync it to my ipod, but it shows up just fine. Or were you hoping there would be a genius-on-the-go option? I don’t think that’s possible since genius requires access to the itunes internet database.
You can actually get “genius on the go”, or at least you can with the iPhone… I’ve used it now and then, just hit the little atom icon when a song is playing, and I get a playlist.
Doesn’t mean it’ll be a *good *playlist, but it’s *a *playlist…
I’m talking about opening itunes on my computer, selecting my ipod, and playing a song from it. It has genius disabled for songs I play from my ipod while connected to my computer. It will only generate from the HARD DRIVE’s library, not the ipods. And since I keep all of my music on my ipod rather than my computer harddrive, Genius is braindead.