The Genius of iTunes

by Jay Gabler, TC Daily Planet • 10/6/08 •

Though I’m an avid iTunes user, I normally don’t rush to download each new release—generally, the primary “improvement” with any given release of the free program is a feature that makes it more efficient for Apple to sell music and videos. That’s true of the most prominent new feature in the latest release (8.0), but the new feature has also changed the way I listen to the music I already own.

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The feature is annoyingly called “Genius,” but it does display an uncanny artificial intelligence. Here’s how it works: You give the program permission to communicate with Apple about the contents of your music library. (Apple promises it won’t use the information for underhanded purposes…whatever. I don’t really care.) Once Genius has indexed your library, you can select any song and hit the Genius button to generate a playlist of songs from your own library that “go great with” the song you selected. There’s also a—thankfully hideable—“Genius sidebar” that tells you what similar songs you have the, er, opportunity to purchase from the iTunes Store.

Not everyone has been impressed with the new feature—“iTunes Genius is a Moron,” says the Unofficial Apple Weblog—but I’m impressed. When I generate a playlist based on Cat Power’s cover of Bob Dylan’s “Paths of Victory,” for example, the program knows to include songs by Dylan himself as well as other Cat Power songs and artists like Rilo Kiley and Belle and Sebastian. (Jenny Lewis and company seem to be at the crossroads of my music library—Rilo Kiley shows up on just about every Genius playlist I generate.) My most significant frustration is that it can’t handle some artists who aren’t national headliners: it throws up its digital hands, for example, at Jenny Dalton.

Like the directions for its products, Apple’s explanation of exactly what variables Genius considers is simple to the point of opacity…but however it works, it works. A Genius playlist unfolds like a good soundtrack to a movie, with a flow of songs that somehow just seem to fit together. With 23.9 days of music on my hard drive, I’ve been using the feature almost every day to discover songs and artists I’d forgotten I had—though it was obviously designed to sell music, it’s actually been saving me money by reminding me of all the music I already own that I don’t listen to enough.