As much as I love my iPods over the years, I despise iTunes. It has the Apple condescending “do things our way or not at all” attitude that makes iPhotos absolutely unusable. So when I heard that the new updates to the iPod line included a full version upgrade to iTunes, I gritted my teeth. But it had a new feature I wanted to try. Supposedly, the Genius button will take a song and then make a playlist with similar music from your songs. I call it the Pandora Effect. I gave it a try using two of my favorite and most iconic songs, “London Calling” by The Clash and “Born To Run” by Bruce Springsteen. Here are the results:
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But they did make one huge direct hit. Putting “Hot Blooded”, my YouTube hit, on the BTR alone justifies its algorithm. They nailed me dead to right.
But how would the geniuses do with more obscure selections? I have a lot of artists on my playlist that fall into the folky wimminy category. The one song that always brings a tear to my eye is “Power of Two” by the Indigo Girls. Let's see what gets picked to along with it:
- “Power Of Two”, Indigo Girls
- “As Cool as I Am”, Dar Williams
- “Operator (That's Not the Way It Feels) ”, Jim Croce
- “The Mummers' Dance [Edit] ”, Loreena McKennitt
- “Bleecker Street”, Simon & Garfunkel
- “Sensitive New Age Guys”, Christine Lavin
- “Ghost”, Indigo Girls
- “Falter”, Lori McKenna
- “Echoes”, Dar Williams
- “Evidence”, Tara Maclean
- “Love's Recovery”, Indigo Girls
- “Mrs. Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter”, Phranc
- “Northern Sky”, Nick Drake
- “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown”, Jim Croce
- “Distracted”, Ani DiFranco
- “What Do You Hear In These Sounds”, Dar Williams
- “Tom Dooley”, The Kingston Trio
- “I Ain't Marching Anymore”, Phil Ochs
- “Comfortably Numb [1979] ”, Ani DiFranco/Dar Williams
- “It's Not Happening”, The Be Good Tanyas
- “Get Out The Map”, Indigo Girls
- “Ride Me Like a Wave”, Janis Ian
- “New York's Not My Home”, Jim Croce
- “Overlap”, Ani DiFranco
- Zombie Jamboree”, The Kingston Trio
However, I am also a leading internet authority on cheesy music. Perhaps the cheesiest song in my collection is “Sylvia’s Mother” by Dr. Hook. Let’s see if the ‘Geniuses” at Apple can discern quality and the lack thereof.
- “Sylvia's Mother”, Dr. Hook
- “Mother and Child Reunion”, Paul Simon
- “Leader Of The Pack”, The Shangri-las
- “Rag Doll”, Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons
- “Sloop John B”, The Beach Boys
- “Angie”, The Rolling Stones
- “Colour My World”, Chicago
- “Promises”, Eric Clapton
- “So Far Away”, Dire Straits
- “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover”, Paul Simon
- “Dancing in the Street”, David Bowie/Mick Jagger
- “Bungle in the Jungle”, Jethro Tull
- “Only Sixteen”, Dr. Hook
- “I Love The Nightlife”, Alicia Bridges
- “Just Like a Woman”, Bob Dylan
- “The Last Time”, The Rolling Stones
- “My Little Town”, Simon & Garfunkel
- “Hooked on a Feeling”, B.J. Thomas
- “My Hometown”, Bruce Springsteen
- “Sky Pilot”, Eric Burdon & the Animals
- “Rikki Don't Lose That Number”, Steely Dan
- “Long, Long Time”, Linda Ronstadt
- “Loves Me Like a Rock”, Paul Simon
- “Two Out of Three Ain't Bad”, Meat Loaf
- “Mr. Tambourine Man”, The Byrds
Overall, I think these geniuses need to hit the books just a little longer.
BlatantCommentWhoring™: What song would make a good GeniusList?
11 comments:
Oh, see, and I can't WAIT to play with this. Give me another month, for my computer upgrade, and we'll have a playlist war. :)
What a fun new feature, I'm going to have to give it a try. I use my iPod mostly for working out, so I think my song would be "Enter Sandman" Metallica.
Eh. I find this a boring feature, and it took forever to set up with my enormous playlist. Anyway: the way it works, probably, is by collecting data from iTunes users: similar play frequency, ratings, etc. - in other words, it essentially crunches data on the premise that if 100 people like Song A and 99 of them also like Song B, it's a good bed that if you know someone likes Song A that they'll like Song B. What those algorithms can't accommodate is when you like a song for a non-obvious reason (as in: because it's megacheesy, not because it was a chart hit of the early '70s), since fewer people are going to rank songs similarly by more obscure criteria.
I suppose it's a moderately useful little doohickey for people who don't know that much music and want to explore (it also points at songs not in your collection at the iTunes store).
On the other hand, I don't quite get the iTunes hating: I'm not a Mac user, and I don't see a whole lot of "my way or highway" w/iTunes. You may have to fiddle with the settings (such as not ripping to Apple's AAC format, and not buying copy-protected songs), but otherwise I've had no problems using iTunes as my main mp3 player, even though I have a bunch of other audio & mp3 software.
iTunes has gotten more flexible. In the first Windows version, you couldn't rip to mp3 and all the tunes disappeared into the impenetrable iTunes magic database. It has gotten better, but still not as customizable as Media Player. I can't believe I just defended a Microsoft product.
And in the playlists I have made, it has yet to point me to an iTunes song I don't own. I figured the upselling opportunity was the major point of the feature
Of course it won't put a song you don't own in a playlist: it wouldn't be a playlist if you couldn't *play* it. It does, however, point you to recommendations at the iTunes store (if you have that panel visible).
This looks like an interesting feature, but let's face it, last.fm has been there and done that better
On the Indigo Girls list, I count 6 to 8 songs by male artists (not sure about Nick Drake or Phranc), so I'm not sure why you say it thinks Jim Croce need gender reassignment. (There are 3 Croce songs on there, BTW; numbers 3, 14, and 23.) At a guess, I'd say the list reflects a singer/songwriter with guitar set, rather than just angry chicks with guitars.
It obviously didn't realize you wanted cheesy for the last list. Running through the songs in my head, I can hear a certain commonality in a lot of them. (And you put B.J. Thomas in there just to reinforce your "whitest guy on the Internet" reputation.)
To really put this thing to the test, I'd try either Ernie K-Doe's Mother-in-Law or Jimmy Soul's If You Wanna Be Happy.
I've never tried last.fm, but my son turned me onto Pandora, which is crying foul over the increased internet royalties.
Phranc bills herself as an "all-American, Jewish, lesbian folksinger" and has never been close to the mainstream. I don't mind and even expect a few dudes in an Indigo Girls playlist, but Jim Croce just seems so out of place. Especially since I have artists like John Hiatt that would seem to fit in better.
Now I see the recommendations. I had hidden the Genius Sidebar since it didn't seem to do anything.
For "London Calling" it recommended a bunch of Ramones songs that I already own, so I have to give that feature a C- as well.
I'm just giggling over the fact you have "I Love the Nightlife" on your iPod. I'm trying not imagine you dancing around with your headphones on.
It seems so pointless. Of course, it might be nice to have a robot disk jockey to arrange and play my tunes for me. Especially if I could confuse it. I still say Pandora has it beat. I can give it two songs, such as a Temptations song and a Patti Smith song, and darned if it can't pick something I've never heard out of the ether (aether?) and amaze me.
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