Genius Itunes Verdict
October 6, 2008
Not another post about me, no. Arf. But I have to chip in with my 79p to say a few words about Itunes’s Genius feature.
What is basically does is creates a playlist around one song. It does this using the vast database at Apple which contains information about the song, then matches it to another song, and goes on like that. It also throws in a few departures so you’re not left with a bunch of too samey stuff. It does this from the songs in your library by the way, it doesn’t make you buy loads of stuff like critics have said.
There was a radio station when I was a kid that played classic hits the way many US stations do and the way Virgin/Absolute and a hundred others do today. It was called WIFI 92 and I was feeling in that mood today, so I put in a late 70’s classic upbeat smooth song to see what it gave, and results were pretty good.
The song was Hey Nineteen by Steeley Dan and here’s what I got:
It’s Too Late – Carole King
Mexico – James Taylor
Take The Money And Run – Steve Miller
Rich Girl – Hall And Oates
Mr Tambourine Man – The Byrds
All She Wants To Do Is Dance – Don Henley (and make romance, the song says, but apart from that, that’s all she wants to do)
Love, Reign O’er Me – The Who
De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da – The Police
Late In The Evening – Paul Simon
Shower The People – James Taylor
Baker Street – Jerry Rafferty (I played the sax on this)
Spirits In The Material World – The Police
Don’t Do Me Like That – Tom Petty
Help Me – Joni Mitchell
Kodachrome – Paul Simon
Wrapped Around Your Finger – The Police
A Whiter Shade Of Pale – Procol Harem
Don’t Dream It’s Over – Crowded House
Jazzman – Carole King
So Lonely – The Police
Slip Sliding Away – Paul Simon
Heart And Soul – Huey Lewis & The News
Jet Airline – Steve Miller Band
Demolition Man – The Police
Crossroads – Cream
50 Way To Leave Your Lover – Paul Simon
So Far Away – Carole King
If I Ever Lose My Faith In You – Sting
Veronica – Elvis Costello
Run Like Hell – Pink Floyd
You’ve Got A Friend – James Taylor
Born On The Bayou – Creedence Clearwater Revival
White Room – Cream
I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues – Elton John
Close To You – The Carpenters
Brand New Day – Sting
Breakdown – Tom Petty
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down – The Band
Bellbottom Blues – Derek And The Dominos
That’s a pretty good list, given the source material. And you may assume that all the music on my ipod is this type of music, but it isn’t at all, and that’s the clever part. Sure I have a lot of James Taylor and everything The Police have ever done, but then I have everything by Nick Drake and Coldplay and a lot of soul and tons of jazz and none of that is on here.
But it slips in a little Floyd and since Steeley Dan is a “classic” band, it puts in your Eltons and your Polices and your Carpenterses. A little too middle of the road for every day, but sometimes that’s cool.
Huey Lewis? Crowded House? Sting? I am not ashamed.
So a tentative thumbs up for genius, and if Itunes would let me fucking own outright the songs I have bought I’d be happy as a clam.
Oooh – since I’m here, I found out today that the Spanish word for butterfly is mariposa. That’s beautiful, and even more amazing when you think in Italian it’s farfalle and in French it’s papillon. They are all beautiful words. Anyone know what it is in other languages? I’m officially intrigued.
11 comments
Do I have to do everything around here?
Awesome, Katy. And yes you do while I take it easy. It’s called interactivity.
Haha – WIFI 92!! Awesome.
Do you remember when every morning at 7:30 (I think) they would play the same 7 songs (I loved every one of them, by the way)? I don’t recall every one of them, but they included “Apache” by Sugar Hill Gang and “Young Turks” by Rod Stewart. I remember setting my alarm in order to record them on my cassette recorder, and then listening to those 7 songs non-stop for the better part of a year.
Do you further recall the station contest – The Secret Sound? It gripped all of Malvern (and probably other places too), with people of all walks of life discussing/comparing/arguing about what that morning’s Secret Sound was. I phoned in a few, but was never right. Sigh.
Kemosabi, jump on it, jump on it, jump on it…
and Our Lips Are Sealed by The Go-Gos, Van Halen’s Pretty Woman…
This list is a little WCAU, and if you stuck in a little Stevie Winwood and squinted your eyes a little it could almost be 1981.
My dad guessed the Secret Sound once. This one week, every time it came on in the car, he said: “Someone putting sunglasses down on a glass table.” Contestants kept getting it wrong, but he call it out loud about 7 or 8 times that week. Of course, I never dialled in, and he was right.
http://www.wifi92.com/audio/WIFI%20Liz%20Kiley%2011-25-81.mp3
40 seconds in.
Did you know the prize was $4,000???? In my kid-like memory I thought it was something like 200k. Maybe we should do that on here.
Very cool. How do you have that?
I googled it. It took 2 seconds just now. I don’t live completely in the past.
Google? Sounds dirty.
Schmetterling. That’s it in German.
The Genius feature (which I haven’t tested out yet because it keeps running into some error or other on my computer) seems like iTunes’ answer to http://www.Pandora.com, “the music genome project” which may be the most awesome contribution to music since, oh, music itself.
(You create “stations” of streaming music by choosing a ’seed’ song, and it populates the rest of the station with songs similar to the first one in sound/rhythm/etc.) Yay, free music! (Supported by ads and the links to buy the songs from iTunes or Rhapsody, which I’ve done on numerous occasions – its’ a great way to find new music!)
I think I will install the latest iTunes on your recommendation, but I do have reservations about anything which calls itself ‘Genius’. It’s like something being called Brilliant, or Awesome. The chances are it won’t be.
Also, looking at Katy’s link, I particularly like the native Ethiopian for butterfly, “Billambilloot.”
I sort of hope it’s an onomatopoeic word stemming from the frankly enormous butterflies that inhabit those parts.
Leave a comment. Play nice. I will turn this blog around.