Apple iTunes 8's Ingenious Genius Feature

I don't care what the techie pundits say about the Genius feature in the eighth generation of Apple's iTunes application for their iPod/iPhone family of portable digital audio visual devices. I like it just fine.

Apple iTunes 8

Genius is a feature of iTunes 8 that creates instant playlists from the music that's in your iTunes Library. Just select a song to play from your iTunes Library, click on the Genius button (an atomic symbol) on the bottom row of the iTunes 8 browser interface, and an instant playlist of songs is generated from your iTunes Library. For me, I have found each Genius-generated playlist to be uncannily compatible with each song that I select from my iTunes Library.

Along with the instant playlist generated from your iTunes Library, Genius also generates a sidebar list of compatible songs that you can purchase from the online iTunes Store. Pretty slick business move, if you ask me.

Genius playlist example

I selected a live version of "Red House" by Jimi Hendrix and the Genius list generated from my iTunes Library included:

• "Cold Turkey" by John Lennon
• "Visions of Johanna" by Bob Dylan
• "Kick out the Jams" by the MC5
• "Franklin's Tower" by the Grateful Dead

The result: none of the 100 tunes generated from my Library seemed out of place.

However, the top iTunes Store album purchase recommendation was "American Woman" by The Guess Who. While this recommendation was popular during the same era (sixties/early seventies), the compatibility factor was off. Back in the day, The Guess Who was considered more AM radio fare than Jimi Hendrix.

Pandora Radio

Critics of the Apple iTunes Genius feature, however, mostly cry "copycat", and this appellation may be at least partially true. After all, Apple iTunes Genius feature has loosely borrowed concepts from preexisting online automotive music recommendation applications like Pandora Radio.

Created by the Music Genome Project, you can search for a song or an artist at Pandora and a list of similar artists and songs are generated into your personal online radio station. And, like iTunes Genius, Pandora offers the ability to buy songs from the iTunes Store. Unlike iTunes Genius, Pandora also allows you to buy songs from other online music stores such as Amazon MP3.

iTunes App Store

In 2008, Apple introduced Pandora Internet Radio as a free iPhone and iPod Touch application available for download in the iTunes App Store.

Additional criticisms of iTunes Genius

The current version of iTunes Genius doesn't synch well with older iPod generations. And Genius won't recommend artists (such as The Beatles) that aren't available for purchase in the iTunes Store.