“For us, the most interesting part of iTunes 8 is the Genius feature. Not because it’s essentially a new way of selling you stuff from the iTunes Store. But because if you have a massive library of music, it seems to be a fun way of rediscovering music you already have, even if it is pretty similar to what Last.fm has been doing for ages,” Crave at CNET reports.
Genius “adds automation, and allows you to create these custom playlists on the new iPods. And in our tests it appeared to work fairly well — you select a track you like, click the Genius button, and you’re given a playlist of songs similar to your source track,”Crave at CNET reports.
Genius is “very impressive. But Genius isn’t idiot-proof, and we did manage to break it…”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Chuckles the Microsoft CEO” for the heads up.]
Well, CNET does have enough idiots on hand to break whatever they get a’holdt.
I have found that the Genius playlists are a great place to start, but not perfect. After I delete about 10-30% of the songs, I have a really great playlist. I hope iTunes keeps track of what you remove/skip so that the feature becomes better over time.
I was pleasantly surprised at the initial playlists I generated, they were a good mix of complementary songs with enough variation to make for an interesting listen. Not 100% but only you could do that and it would take far longer.
that this is limited to offerings available from iTMS? A lot of the music in my library isn’t even available there . . . this feature isn’t acting so smart for me.
I’m actually surprised, too. On the first day out with a Genius playlist, I haven’t skipped one song on my trek to work today. Pretty slick work, Apple. Now, if you can just make AT&T;not force a data plan or have a PAYG data feature, you’d make many more potential iPhone 3G users happy. Not everyone uses or needs a $30 data plan, but everyone I know loves the iPhone.
I too think the playlists are fairly accurate and they can only get better over time, but I don’t really need them or want to use them.
What I found really, really, useful was the Pandora like way it can find things in the iTunes store that are similar to something you already own. I discovered several artists I hadn’t known about that were very similar to my favourites in a matter of minutes.
What’s really, really sad and stupid though is that this feature is not available on the mobile iTunes store and the iPhone/iPod. I can’t for the life of me figure out why they left this feature out of the mobile store. It’s guaranteed to increase their sales. It makes no sense that you can’t really use this feature, which to me is the most useful aspect of Genius, when you aren’t sitting at home.
@ I’m guessing,
No, it’s not limited to just offerings from iTMS. Select a song and hit the little Genius button on the bottom right hand side of the application frame and a Genius playlist is created and that’s it. If you like it, save it. But it’s pretty cool – it’s made some nice little compilations for me already from my 30.4 days worth of music.
Does shuffle no longer work for anyone else in itunes? That’s what I’ve notice already.
Have been wanting features like this for years, Last Fm is a great way to discover new music though of course when its limited to your own library it is a little limited by comparison. The only logic for some form of subscription service (or at least something that can mimic this aspect) is that it would remove that limitation but of course at a cost.
That said I have estimated I would probably have doubled my buying from iTunes had a facility like Last fm existed within it so maybe it could be made to work somehow. Of course if you could stream for free then who would buy the new music they found. Unfortunately before I could exploit it on my home computer I have noticed that Last fm has replaced the iTunes link with one for Amazon. So who knows maybe more is to come in this respect from iTunes.
@ I’m Guessing
I noticed that too. The Genius recommendations fail spectacularly when the track/artist in question is not offered in the iTunes store. This is going to be a real problem in that people actually don’t only listen to music from the country they live in. It assumes that people in the USA won’t have European music tracks and vice versa.
Yet another case where the music cartels and the crumbling old business models are preventing things from moving forward.
This works for video as well. I live in Canada, but if it were available, I would buy literally hundreds of TV shows and movies from the UK. Merely by clinging to the outmoded country based distribution model, the media giants are throwing away huge amounts of money from people who would rather buy than steal these shows.
Genius doesn’t work that well for music classified as “World Music”
I’m listening to Chinese Pop of the 80s and 90s. All I got was islamic and jewish music with some guy hummming then yelling moments later.
I feel sorry for the tech support. Imagine what they have to put up, with idiots that call up claiming the songs it suggests are not similar. And those same idiots would want help to configure genius to better suit them…. argh
Anyone else notice the new standard visualizer in itunes 8? The one Keven Rose mentioned. Very nice.
You get the Genius error with 95% of Film Score tracks–even those purchased through iTunes. Kind of annoying if you have a few hundred Film Scores. It works fine for all of my other genres.
any geniuses notice their volume not working over airtunes while on a genius playlist?
After I installed iTunes 8, I want to give it a try for that features, but it hang with the beach ball spinning forever and need force to quit. Better yet, I can’t update my App from the App Store. It said error on my iTunes App Store (error 5002). Apple, I want you to make money and love your invention. But please help us to get it through this smoothly … at least at the beginning… not to mention I need to restore my iPhone every other day until I gave up purchasing anymore Apps and sync with my phone. Will give you (Apple) one more chance this Friday with the 2.1 update. I still love you, Apple
@Jeremy
“The Genius recommendations fail spectacularly when the track/artist in question is not offered in the iTunes store.”
Your diatribe fails spectacularly. If only your straw man had a brain!
Haven’t tried it yet, but to those saying it doesn’t work well with non-ITS songs, might that improve over time? SJ did say that it compares EVERYONE’S songs up in the cloud. Thus I’m wonding if once more people around the world begin using it (or at least more in the USA), won’t the feature begin to ‘learn’ about more (types of) music?
@onebook
Speak louder! Apple can’t hear you unless you yell at the top of your lungs. Also, you might be better served if you contact Apple directly.
U.S. iPhone technical support: 1-800-MY-IPHONE (1-800-694-7466)
On the chance that you live outside the US here are the phone numbers:
Australia (61) 1-300-321-456*
Austria (43) 0810 300 427*
Belgium (Flemish) (32) 070 700 772 (French) (32) 070 700 773
Brazil (Outside Sao Paulo) 0800-127753 (Sao Paulo) 5503-0090
Brunei Dial 800-1111 first; when prompted, dial 800-708-5413
Canada (English) 1-800-263-3394 (French) 1-800-263-3394
China (86) 4006-272273
Denmark (45) 70 10 20 07
Finland (358) 0800 96162
Fiji (61) 133-622*
France (Metropolitain) (33) 0825 88 80 24* (DOM-TOM) (33) 0825 77 00 35*
Germany (49) 01805 009 433**
Guam 1-800-865-0853
Hong Kong (852) 2112-0099*
India (91) 1800 4250 744 or (91) 80-4140-9000
Indonesia (62) 0018 03061 2009
Ireland (353) 1850 946 191
Italy (39) 199 120 800*
Japan (Within Japan) 0120-27753-5 (Outside Japan) (81) 3-5334-2096
Korea (82) 1544-2662*
Latin America and Caribbean (Sorry, I couldn’t find a phone number)
Luxembourg (352) 800 24550
Macau Dial 0800-111, then 800-708-5413
Malaysia (60) 1-800 803-638
Mexico 001-866-676-5682
Netherlands (31) 0900 7777 703
New Zealand 00800-7666-7666
Norway (47) 815 00 158
Pakistan Dial 00800 01001, then 800 361 0479
Papua New Guinea (61) 133-622*
Philippines 1-800-1441-0234
Poland 00800 4411875 (universal free phone)
Portugal (00351) 0707 200 826 (national rate)
Russia 495 5809557 pstn (local rate for Moscow, national rates for others)
Singapore 800-186-1087 (65) 6835-1812*
Spain (34) 902 151 992
Sweden (46) 0771 199 519
Switzerland (French) (41) 0848 000 132 (German) (41) 0848 000 132
Tonga (61) 133-622*
Taiwan (886) 0800-095-988
Thailand (66) 02-642-0230
United Kingdom (44) 0870 876 0753*
The Genius feature works like the retarded cousin of Pandora. Admitted, I didn’t really expect it to be as revolutionary as Pandora…but so far it’s more or less embarrassing. Especially frustrating for people outside of the U.S who can’t use Pandora anymore. Also, I can’t believe that so little extra functionality is being added to iTunes with each update. Like, searching for a track would also show me in what playlist(s) it resides. Still missing is the possibility to recognize a track-name in my playlist – although something has been misspelled or the album name is missing. Goggle Suggest, anyone? And it’s still impossible to send iTunes gifts/playlists to people outside your own country i.e someone in Germany can’t give a person in Sweden a gift/playlist. I could go on rambling…
cheers
Any word on whether GENIUS will be available for normal iPod Classic?
A simple software upgrade should suffice; no hardware needed
From the article, on how CNET “broke” the Genius:
Trying to create a playlist of music based on any track from Shakira’s 1998 album Dónde Están los Ladrones? resulted in an error message. This is probably a teething issue, but it’s not as if Shakira’s a niche selection, is it?
In all fairness, in this case, the Genius wasn’t too smart. Unless it has the taste to not like Shakira.
“The Genius recommendations fail spectacularly when the track/artist in question is not offered in the iTunes store.”
I gave up on Genius after it failed to find any info about over a dozen songs in my library, all of which I’d ripped from my own CD’s.
Yes, have played with it a bit now and not much joy in my collection (currently I have over 11,000 songs in my library, mostly ripped myself, and I don’t use genre tags). Oh well. It’s a very cool idea, integrating this into iTunes. Maybe it’ll evolve over time? I did send a bug report to Apple about not manually being able to alter the three column view in the browser by default (and yes, I’ve discovered the temporary terminal fix). I’ll chime in and advise others to let Apple hear their concerns or wishes too.