got the new iTunes today, it has some new-fangled thing called “Genius” in it that basically creates playlists and reccommends songs to purchase (which you can thankfully disable and just use the playlist part)… kindof like a mixture between BeaTunes, Musicbrainz and LastFM, but less featured… although it’s still new so i’ll give it time. you enable iTunes to send info about your collection (songs, artists, genres, my collection is a little over 4500 songs so it took a while) to Apple and they will update their Genius database weekly to incorporate all the info it has learned. then you can choose a song you like and tell Genius to populate a playlist of whatever length with what it determines is similar music.
it’s not bad so far, although there are some features i would like to see later like color and bpm matching, but it has issues with certain types of music (what immediately comes to mind is the non-recognition of my J-pop, or the beatles (that’s due to lawsuits, though..)), although i think that as more people populate the database it will work the kinks out.
i’ve made a few playlists so far, and they’ve come out ok. i made it a point to chose stuff to build on that i know more than a few people will have, as an example, i picked Joy Division’s Dead Souls and got a playlist like this:
Dead Souls - Joy Division
24 Hour Party People - Happy Mondays
Temptation - New Order
Play for Today - The Cure
The Guns of Brixton - The Clash
Mongoloid - DEVO
Stripped - Depeche Mode
Shadow Play - Joy Division
She’s So High - Blur
TV Party - Black Flag
Legal Tender - The B-52s
Charlotte Sometimes - The Cure
See Emily Play - Pink Floyd
Cellphone’s Dead - Beck
Auf Achse - Franz Ferdinand
There There - Radiohead
Stray Cat Blues - The Rolling Stones
Dead Souls - Nine Inch Nails
Girl U Want - DEVO
Ceremony - Joy Division
Know Your Rights - The Clash
10.15 Saturday Night - The Cure
Warm Leatherette - The Normal
Black Celebration - Depeche Mode
52 Girls - The B-52s
as you can see, it appears to have the appropriate amount of self-loathing to be a list generated from a Joy Division track. the picks from Black Flag and Pink Floyd puzzle me a little, but in playing it it flows quite well. if you don’t like what it has thrown together in the 25ms it thought of it you can use a refresh button to get something potentially better (or worse).
Genius appears to be a pretty good tool for when you simply can’t stand to listen to shuffle anymore (especially if you’re like me and your collection spans everything from Classical to Gangsta Rap to Hair Metal to World Music, random can really fux0r your brain sometimes), or if you want a genre’d playlist but are too lazy/rushed for time to think one through.
automatic playlist generation is quite cool, i’ve been doing it with many applications over the years and as my collection grows it’s becoming even more important that i don’t get stuck on the same music, forsaking other potential goodies. although i find it necessary to point out that back in my day we didn’t have playlists, we called them “mixtapes”, and we used LPs, cds and other cassettes to make them. and we liked it. UPHILLBOTHWAYS, BITCH!
