iTunes Genius that is…a reflection on true genius will need to wait for another day.

When I first heard about the Genius feature in iTunes, I was excited.  It seemed like a promising feature, and it certainly is…but in my experience, it’s still only that – promising.

On a scale of  ‘Completely Clueless’ to ‘Near Genius’, I would rate the current feature as ‘Moderately Good Guessing’. I’ve had playlists that were quite good, but I’ve had an equal number, if not more, that cause their share of head-scratching. Some disclaimers:

• I only use the feature on the iPhone (my main avenue for listening to music)
• I stay with the ‘25 songs’ option.
• I have not rated a single song in iTunes (do people do that?).
• I acknowledge that this feature is trying to accomplish something rather ambitious and will develop over time.

That being said, my main gripe with the feature is that it seems to lack depth – I see this in two (related) ways:

1. Often, the first cut on a playlist is decent, but if I try to ‘refresh’, it keeps about 75 – 80% of the list intact, bringing in only a couple of new songs. Now, I could understand if the artists stay the same and the songs change, but the songs typically do not change? (see point 2).
2. It prefers the same few songs from artists. Depending on the artist,  I can predict with fairly good accuracy what songs it will include in the list, even if there are plenty of others to use.
   • One concrete example is Sigur Ros – if they are represented in the playlist, there’s about a 90% chance (not kidding) that the song Genius adds to the playlist will be ‘Untitled #5′ – I have 60+ songs from them to choose…where’s the variety?

I will say there are some things I appreciate about Genius in it’s current form:

• The ‘first pass’ on a playlist – as I said, this is usually pretty decent.
• Reminding me about some artists I haven’t listened to in awhile.
• The ability to create an on-the-fly playlist when someone asks for one from your iPod. It helps avoid the moment of panic of ‘what to add?’.  Now, if there’s a poor song choice, just blame it on Genius. ;  )

To end this on a positive note, I’d like to offer a few suggestions for improvement:

• More depth (see above)
• Ability to rate a playlist from the iPhone / iPod (i.e. borrow the Pandora idea a bit) and improve based on that.
• Song-by-Song swap potential (i.e. if the playlist overall is pretty good, but I want to swap out songs 8 and 17, have an option that will allow that).

Any others?

I have high hopes that one day this feature will match the often stunning accuracy of Pandora.  Naturally, Pandora has been at it a little longer, has a slightly different approach (not limited to a local music collection), and offers song-by-song rating. Still, I find Pandora’s selection to be pretty amazing…certainly close to the ‘Near Genius’ end of the scale.

Filed under: Music, Technology