Genius: You Don't Know Me!

Compared to the endless tech blogs that litter this internet, I am often too intimidated to weigh-in on much of the daily geek buzz. I consider myself far from an expert on the subjects most seen, except when it comes to music libraries, or more specifically in my biased-fanboy world, iTunes.
Today marked the release of iTunes 8.0, the latest release of Apple's very popular bloatware music software. Included in the list of new features is the "Genius" recommendation tool, which promises to make you a playlist of similar songs in your library to the one you choose.
I'm intrigued, but immediately skeptical. On the music snob scale of 1-10, I'm an 11. I don't want to give iTunes the chance to think it knows my music taste better than I do. In another world, I might even ignore the upgrade, but in this one I have an irrational trust for Steve & Co. and a complex about downloading software updates, so I made sure I had started the download before I even sat down after work.

The first thing Genius does is send my entire listing of library songs (and ratings, play counts, and who knows what else) to Apple's servers. Pure gold for advertising groups, given willingly by not reading a long textbox of Terms and Conditions before clicking "I Accept".

Half an hour later, I started playing a recent favorite addition to my library: "Three Fishers" by The Duhks. I thought this unique because I don't have a whole lot of bluegrass-inspired music in my library. But the Genius surprised me. Choosing a list of 25 songs (default setting, can be changed) with no artist's work appearing more than twice, it crossed from the starting Genre of Country to include Rock, Pop, Indie Rock, Indie Pop, Folk, and Alternative Folk. Now since the iTunes store doesn't sell albums with the genre "Alternative Folk" (that's more of an AMG tag), I determined these recommendations are directly related to the songs themselves, and are likely queried by title and artist and linked to a unique song id from the iTunes music store. This is what was happening during the half-hour of Genius warm-up.

Testing that theory, I tried to Genius a Moveable Furniture song. The Moveable Furniture are not sold on the iTMS, and instead of embarrassing itself (or The Furniture) by suggesting I listen to "MMM Bop" next, Genius gave me the following message:


This is a good sign. How about a little-known artist who is sold on the iTMS?

Tom Butwin returned results similar to those listed on his MySpace page under "Influences" including the Dave Matthews Band. Genius also put some John Mayer on the playlist, and although Tom didn't list Mr. Mayer as an influence, everyone knows he has John Mayer hair.

I have a few songs in my library that stand alone in their genre. One of these is Ziggy Marley's "Love is My Religion". The song came from iTunes as a free download, and just to make sure iTunes had the song linked, I clicked the small arrow next to the song in my library (which curiously can no longer be turned off in the iTunes preferences) and sure enough I was taken straight to the song in the store.

What songs in my Reggae-less library could the Genius possible recommend based on a Ziggy Marley tune?

None. And I'm glad it didn't even try.

One last test: What happens if I Genius a song I don't particularly enjoy? Back in 2005 I saw the Zutons open for Keane and decided I enjoyed the show enough to buy the album. Unfortunately, after playing it at home I quickly tired of the sound and felt annoyed whenever it would come on. Can the Genius create a playlist of other songs that marginally make my ears bleed but I'm too embarrassed to delete? It can.

I don't dislike any of those other songs as much as the Zutons ones, but I'd expect all those tracks to have similar Skip Counts.

The thing that really blows my mind about the Genius system is that it all must happen offline (did I mention bloatware?) for the feature to be included in the newly-released iPod nano. Apple alluded to the offline-functionality when they mentioned that linking data would be updated weekly. I suppose it has its pro's and con's, but as my MacBook ages (and my iPhone battery drains) I'd prefer as much processing as possible to be done in the cloud.

Overall, I'm pretty impressed with Genius on initial prodding. Time will tell if I'll actually use the feature for my own listening pleasure. I do foresee using it when a friend is nearby and says, "Wow! I love that song. What else you got?" Then I'll let the Genius work and take all the credit for myself.