iTunes Becomes a Genius on Blog24

iTunes Becomes a Genius

Posted by Chris
On September 12, 2008
Categories: Apple

Forget HD television programmes being available to download, forget the new iPhoto-like album display (although a welcome addition), forget the new ‘Visualizer’, Genius is the best new feature to be introduced.

Genius is a neat feature that allow automatic creation of playlists based on the track that is currently selected. These playlists can be refreshed in an instant and saved for later.

Steve Jobs has assured that the information that is collected weekly via the Internet is totally anonymous. Without this assurance I doubt many people would partake in the use of Genius. The information that is used by Apple includes your playlists, track names, ratings and play counts. All of this is combined with other iTunes users’ info to form a massive database of information makes Genius work.

The only problem Genius, is the time it takes to install and set up, this is largely because of amount of information Apple collect, but times vary depending on how big your music collection is. No matter how longs it take, I sincerely think that this is worth the wait.

Testing the iTunes Genius

I delayed writing this until I had tested Genius several times and I can confirm that it really does work well.

The Genius button [iTunes] To get started simply choose a track and press the Genius button [left] which is located towards the bottom right of the iTunes window.

My first test was with a Blur track and the resulting playlist was great and included tracks by Echo and the Bunnymen, The Farm, Oasis and Snow Patrol. I did not skip a track.

To date I haven’t bothered too much with playlists but now Genius makes it easy to create lists filled with logical choices.

There are the nay sayers who are saying that Genius does not work, but it can only get better. Given time more people will agree to have their data uploaded and used for the algorithm to digest. More more data there is the better Genius will get. There will always be the odd misfit that finds its way into the occasional playlist but, simply refresh if that is the case. Lesser known music may prove to be problematic too.

Here is what happens when iTunes Genius does not know the track you are playing, in this case ‘Disillusioned’ by Terra Ferma.

Genius is unavailable for the song 'Disillusioned'

This suggests that lesser known music, that which is not available at the iTunes Store, will cause Genius to fail in this manner. Maybe if these tracks were in playlists mixed in with mainstream music then the alert shown above would not pop up so often.

Keeping positive

An important factor that will make Genius live up to its promise of creating the ‘perfect playlist’ is how much music you have. Obviously Genius will be limited by the quantity of tracks it has to choose from.

At the time of writing I have over 15,500 tracks in my iTunes music collection and my music tastes are fairly eclectic with music that ranges from the 1930s to the present day (not including classical), from jazz to techno, punk to folk — you get the idea. With this variety Genius has worked well for me.

Genius links with the iTunes Store

What some might call a marketing ploy, the Genius sidebar is a great idea. It will make it easier to find music from other artists that you may not have heard of. The iTunes store already recommended music that you might like based on previous purchases, the Genius sidebar builds upon the marketing that was already built into iTunes software.

There are many times that I have used recommendation services of iTunes and Amazon purely to discover new music only to buy the album elsewhere whether that be from eBay, high street shops, or rival online companies.

At least the sidebar is optional and discreet. If you do not like it then switch it off! Obviously it is a great tool for Apple to encourage the sale of more albums, but it is a great tool for users too. Think of it as an incredibly knowledgeable and friendly sales assistant.

Set Media Kind

One new feature that mentioned briefly by Steve Jobs was ‘Set Media Kind’. This will prove extremely useful for those who intend to import audiobooks from CD. Here is what the Apple website has to say about this feature:

Say you’re importing a set of language learning discs. If you want iTunes to categorize tracks on those discs as audiobooks, just select the tracks and choose Audiobooks from the Media Kind pop-up menu in the Options pane of Get Info. Now, instead of appearing in your music library, your imported tracks appear in your audiobooks library

Worth the download?

While it might not be a feature that everyone will want to enable but Genius works extremely well — if your music collection coincides with that sold on iTunes. This is an unfortunate and significant drawback and one Apple ought to address soon.

Apple will improve Genius without doubt but until that happens it is up to the users to enable Genius to make it even better.

The other features that were mentioned at the beginning are great too bye the way, but I was most impressed with Genius. Judge for youself, download iTunes 8 (for Mac and PC) and post your thought in the comments.

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