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A new web service for listening to your own music, not sharing it, has been launched today. Called, blueTunes, it allows users to upload their music collection and listen to it via the web. Going on holiday? Take a laptop and your music will follow. At a party that lacks decent music? (We’ve all been in that situation I’m sure!) Login and blast a few of your favorites favourites!
Genius was introduced in Apple iTunes 8. It is a feature that enables users to created playlists of music that ‘go together well’.
Since its introduction iTunes Genius has had an unfair amount of criticism. While it is not perfect, Genius is a useful tool which will improved upon given time.
While Genius relies on mass user input to work perhaps Apple should consider joining forces with some software and web-based services that already exist to greatly improve the feature.
Firstly, when I first read about Genius (before the official launch) I thought it would actually analyse the music itself rather than just data about user music collections and playing habits.
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.
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