Itunes "Genius"

[DAME]

Posted: 9/15/08 at 9:01pm

I have held back from turning the option on because I am not crazy about Apple knowing everything that is in my music library. I have privacy concerns. Has anyone used it? Any thoughts?

Updated On: 9/15/08 at 09:01 PM

[Pippin]

Posted: 9/15/08 at 9:03pm

I like it. it was afraid of the same thing, but then I thought "what the hell?"

It doesn't work for every song, which I guess it may in time, but for what it does, it's worth it. It makes really fun playlists with songs that I wouldn't really think of putting back to back, but they work.

I say do it. If you don't like it, I think it can always be turned off.

[killertofu333]

Posted: 9/15/08 at 11:01pm

I'm not crazy about "Big Brother" Apple knowing everything either. The last thing I need is them saying: "Hey how does she have all this music, because our records show all of 2 song purchases from us in the past 3 years!!!!"

I don't need them knowing every little thing about my library and playlists including my obsession with Shoshana Bean, Godspell, Feist and Psapp.

Although everyone here at BWW knows now. Anyhoo...

[25th Annual Speller]

Posted: 9/15/08 at 11:30pm

I think it's stupid. They basically say "OH, they have a song similar to this... let's tell them to buy it."

[LePetiteFromage]

Posted: 9/15/08 at 11:42pm

Updated On: 1/13/09 at 11:42 PM

[best12bars]

Posted: 9/16/08 at 4:04am

It's way too much invasion of privacy. Aside from them knowing everything about your music library, I kinda see it as the equivalent of a really annoying, aggressive sales clerk at a clothing store who follows you around and keeps making disruptive suggestions like, "I see you're looking at the black pants! I've got a great shirt that would go with those right over here for $.99!"

No thanks, annoying sales clerk, I'll pick out my own shirts to go with these pants. Now, buzz off.

[verynewyorkcurious]

Posted: 9/16/08 at 4:18am

I think you guys are getting the wrong idea of how it works.

You listen to a song as you normally would, and if you feel like listening to songs of the same genre/style, you click the Genius button on the lower right corner, and it creates a Genius playlist using the songs in your library that it thinks you might like. It's actually very cool. I was reluctant at first, but it's great, especially if you have a huge library of songs.

It doesn't suggest you buy anything. The only invasion it does is it gets song titles from your library, and it figures out what you might like through what has been purchased in the iTunes store.

[Maraclea2]

Posted: 9/16/08 at 6:49am

Apple doesn't know what's in your playlist. It's just automatic sorting software based on the info you put on each of your songs.
And call me crazy, but even if apple knows what's in my itunes, so what? I don't keep my government secrets in there. It's just music people.

[~FloweryFriend~]

Posted: 9/16/08 at 7:41am

You can hide the section that recommends stuff in the iTunes store (which I did). It's just nice to have an automatic playlist maker. It does a decent job, actually. The problem is that it doesn't recognize all my music (like "American Boy" by Estelle).

[verynewyorkcurious]

Posted: 9/16/08 at 2:50pm

American Boy works on my Genius.

[DBillyP]

Posted: 9/17/08 at 5:28pm

It amuses me that the album artwork feature is faulty. For "Curtains," it currently shows "Little Women," and for "Altar Boys" I have "Ballroom."

What is not amusing me is that some albums have been split so that each song receives its own album.

[Maraclea2]

Posted: 9/17/08 at 6:46pm

They're split b/c they are tagged as being by different artists. this happens a lot with cast recordings, but also with albums where an artist sings one song as a duet. If you're particularly picky you can edit the "artist" column and make every song by the same performer.
For example, you could name every track on Follies as being sung by "original cast", or whatever.

[everythingtaboo]

Posted: 9/18/08 at 1:39am

For "Genius", I prefer to use Pandora.com.

[ray-andallthatjazz86]

Posted: 9/18/08 at 1:55am

I tried it and it's just okay. Nothing major. I turned off the "you should buy" part, and just use it to create playlists. I'm not sure exactly how it creates a playlist though. For example, based on "Super Trouper" from the MAMMA MIA soundtrack, it created a playlist that included "Happiness" from PASSION, Kristin Chenoweth's "I'm A Stranger Here Myself," "The Oldest Profession" from THE LIFE, "The Saga of Jenny" from LADY IN THE DARK, and Bernadette Peters' "I Never Thought I'd Break," among others. I still don't get how it made those connections.

[DBillyP]

Posted: 9/18/08 at 10:23am

Thanks Maraclea2; I discovered that while playing with it after I posted, though I find that it's the album artist that makes the difference. You can change the album artist to the same thing (for instance the composer's name) and leave the correct singers for the individual songs.

[jasonf]

Posted: 9/18/08 at 2:56pm

Does using this send info TO Apple? I'm not really comfortable with that if it does...

[thesondhead]

Posted: 9/18/08 at 4:16pm

Removed.

Updated On: 9/18/08 at 04:16 PM

[DBillyP]

Posted: 9/18/08 at 4:41pm

Isn't that what I said?!?

[thesondhead]

Posted: 9/18/08 at 6:01pm

Apologies. I missed it before.
I removed the post.

[DBillyP]

Posted: 9/18/08 at 6:02pm

LOL ... oh, you didn't need to do that. I was only teasing!

[Maraclea2]

Posted: 9/18/08 at 6:12pm

It does not send your playlists to apple. You have to agree to something to do that. It simply colates songs that are tagged with similar qualifications.
Now, there are a number of people who participate in making their playlists public. I believe that genius draws from that database as well.

But, unless you have agreed to share your playlists then apple does not have access to the contents of your library.

[Craww]

Posted: 10/2/08 at 1:00am

I actually really like it. It brings up songs I love, but wouldn't think to listen to as often, with much better success than just putting everything on Shuffle.