Skip to Content

My iTunes Genius is a Moron

Shh. Don't tell anyone. My iTunes Genius is tone deaf. When I selected "Man of Constant Sorrow" as my "seed" song, My Genius actually suggested "America, F**k [sic] Yeah" and "Gonna Fly Now (Theme from Rocky)" at the store. The proper genre, or at least the genre I was looking for, was "Rockin' Bluegrass", not "Obscure Movie Themes". Bzzt. Let's try again.

Next, I tried "Funiculi Funicula" by Pavarotti, a song I knew was in the store. I was told "Genius is unavailable" for that song. Please choose another song or artist. A few more tries revealed that I needed to focus on pop music, not classical or obscure. Well enough. But then I got the same error message for the Beatles' "Long and Winding Road." You know them, a mildly popular band of the 1960s, known for not being sold through iTunes but otherwise not an unthinkable choice in a modern playlist.

Success finally followed for Alison Krauss' "Down to the River to Pray". My genius matched me up with Queen's "Bicycle Race", the Wreckers' "Rain" and Billy Joel's "Say Goodbye to Hollywood." These are not exactly groupings that I would have picked myself. Listening through to the playlist hit home how jarring those selections were.

I expect the Genius feature will only improve, especially as Apple big brothers all our personal music collections but for now I'm so totally not dropping Last.fm any time soon.

How's Genius working for you? Are your playlists sublime or just strange? Let us know in the comments.



Categories

iTunes

Shh. Don't tell anyone. My iTunes Genius is tone deaf. When I selected "Man of Constant Sorrow" as my "seed" song, My Genius actually...
 

Add a Comment

*0 / 3000 Character Maximum

154 Comments

Filter by:
keziacw

What I really don't inderstand is why is that even when I've just bought a song from the iTunes store is no information available for it? It was even the best selling song at the time. How long does it take for iTunes to work out what kind of music a song is after going on sale? And lastly why is it no matter what kind of song I select do I get Micheal Jackson's Thriller as a match?

December 02 2008 at 3:31 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Arock

Pandora is way better than Itunes genius. I use Pandora to find new music that matches my tatses, oh and it works for the beatles too.

November 14 2008 at 4:16 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Dave Zeman

Actually just today I was going to blog about it at

www.myspace.com/davezeman...

I find it very good when it can find a match... I'm wondering why it doesn't always find matches... though my tastes are pretty eclectic.

Dave

November 08 2008 at 1:45 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
sohbet

As used herein an authorized garment is a garment sanctioned to be electronically paired with an authenticated (i.e., certified) sensor. Once the garment and sensor are electronically paired, the sensor can receive (and in some cases process) sensing information (such as garment performance data or user performance data) received from the garment. Since only authorized garments are configured to electronically pair with authenticated sensors, a user (or manufacturer) can be assured that the sensing data received by the sensor is both accurate and consistent with its intended use (a sensor designed for use with running shoes can not properly be used with dance shoes, for example).

http://www.sevgisohbet.com/ youtube

November 01 2008 at 9:50 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
j

It's worked well for me since the beginning,

even better now that it's been going for a month+

and my music collection is pretty diverse!

October 29 2008 at 6:00 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Emma

Mine matched acdc you shook me all night long to miley cyrus's 7 things!
Beat that!

October 28 2008 at 10:50 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Daniel

Kinda useless then when, like me, your favourite bands include folk like PGR, Khanate, and Wlliam Basinski. I'm guessing Genius is not quite genius enough to do an audio analysis of songs to generate playlists.

October 24 2008 at 4:17 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Chris

I've been quite impressed with it. Don't really understand how it will 'improve' over time. Does it have a memory for if you skipped a song on the playlist that gets reported back to Jobs' crew?????? Could do with a pandora style Like or Don't like button I reckon.

Good effort so far I say!

October 13 2008 at 9:16 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
rintaun

You know, I wish I could tell if my Genius actually lives up to its namesake or not.... but it refuses to work on all but about 2 albums in my library. -_-

October 03 2008 at 12:17 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Zephyr

Genius gives me the fail service as well D8

Not to mention that the sidebar made me think it was just some sort of ad.

October 02 2008 at 10:51 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Buy an ad here

Hot Apps on TUAW

Tweets

© 2012 AOL Inc. All Rights Reserved.