Yesterday I spent too much time getting my music organized in iTunes on the Mac so that the new iTunes ‘Genius’ would not suggest to me music I already own. Probably won’t bother trying iTunes for Windows, “bloated” or with unintentional or intentional problems as some folks are suggesting ¹, as I’ve been happily using Zune on Windows for almost 2 years now, but what other compelling choice for music management is there on the Mac (suggestions, please)? It’s sort of a shotgun gadget wedding on the Mac.

Genius creates playlists based on a song you listen to from what you already own and I’ll get to that fun in a minute, but finding/exploring music I don’t own is something I enjoy. A true musical genius would be able to mine the world’s database of music and return me exactly the type of music I enjoy but don’t already own. AmazonMP3 does a decent job recommending me DRM-free MP3 albums I might want to buy based on what I’ve already purchased from them, can the iTunes Genius do better?

First, you have to activate Genius, which burped for me the first time:

But worked fine the second try:

This process took several minutes mining our family’s ever growing music collection of 272 artists and 50.35 GB of music. After running, I noticed iTunes 8 changed my default view to Cover Flow.

Cover Flow looks pretty when you have album art for every artist and ugly when you don’t.

A couple years back I hunted missing album art for every album but through time and circumstance I’m missing a lot these days, since iTunes on the Mac isn’t my regular music player any more. Good thing you are just a view click away from going back to the boring text view and can have iTunes automatically fetch missing album art.

Recommending to buy songs you already own = not Genius 

Even after a couple hours making sure the music library was updated — and Genius was updated too — the Genius was still recommending songs I already owned on best of albums instead of the studio albums. Bummer. I would think a song with the same name by the same band that’s not marked ‘live, unplugged, acoustic, demo’ etc., would not be returned as a result.

Not all the results were bad, I noticed a couple songs of possible future interest. This part of Genius shows promise, but sorry, it’s a long way from being genius.

Play a song and press the Genius button to generate a similar playlist of songs you already own = almost Genius

My first Genius playlist test started with the song "Born Again" by Black Sabbath, here’s the playlist Genius generated:

Cool results! I like many of these songs. They aren’t just popular tracks I’ve listened to with songs like "I’m Insane" by Ratt live and "The Eyes" from Dio’s Master of the Moon. And I totally dig "Keep It Warm" off the same Born Again album, "Heaven and Hell" Live by the renamed Sabbath. This Genius generated list of 25 similar songs is excellent.

I tried playing other less popular songs that I five star rated in iTunes to see what Genius returned. Next: "All Mixed Up" by The Cars:

Doh! Even after an update, no luck with this song. Next song: "Time and Time Again" by Counting Crows:

Another good list with some songs I recognize and like along with some lesser known titles. Thumbs up. Next song: "Comin’ Under Fire" by Def Leppard:

Another solid playlist, saved. I found while testing more songs with Genius, I wished there was some sort of way to quickly output the results of these Genius playlists as text files to share with others online. Wait, this could be where a service like Nutsie comes in. Remember me writing about Nutsie a year ago? Bet the Nutsie folks are ecstatic over Genius. I see where you can make an iMix out of these playlists but Nutsie seems like a better idea if it works with Genius playlists.

Overall, I like what Genius does. I don’t think the name quite fits because as you can see from a small sampling above that there are some holes. I suppose even Einstein wasn’t perfect, so maybe I’m being too harsh, but the Genius algorithm appears very, very good. This feature will encourage me to start using iTunes again. Mission accomplished, Apple.

New iPod announcements

Before exiting this post, I see Matt is curious what I think about the new iPod announcements. From an Apple shareholder standpoint (I’ve owned AAPL stock for a couple years now), I love these Apple events. Steve Jobs out on stage evangelizing like only he can. And what’s not to like about taking $100 off the iPod Touch?

Being excited about touch screen enabled devices like tablet PC, I really like the idea behind the iPhone and  iPod Touch but here’s my problem: not enough practical storage space for the price.

Realistically I’m only going to carry one music device. I’ve already got my Pocket PC which the iPod Touch could someday replace, but I don’t see it having enough space for me at the right price now. We have over 50GB worth of music and my current 30GB Zune isn’t enough. Why would I spend $299 for the iPod Touch 16GB and have 14GB less for music not counting cool iPod Touch applications? Even though the Nano’s price is right the storage is the issue there too. Always have liked the Nike+ tie-in.

Right now the 32GB iPod Touch is selling for $399. The money conscious side of me says: wait it out until the price comes down and storage amount increases. Inevitably it will. The cool gadget side of me is saying to stop thinking about it and drop down the bones now.

The iPhone remains out for me as long as it has anything to do with AT&T. If Sprint had the iPhone, the current cell phone carrier my wife and sons are using (I haven’t had a cell phone of my own for awhile), I might pull the trigger. Been checking out that Samsung Instinct and thought maybe, just maybe that would look good in my hands but then I think about having a phone contract for two more years and that keeps me at bay.

So it looks like I’ll be getting either a Zune 120GB or iPod 120GB classic. In the iPod corner is knowledge that my wife’s 80GB iPod has worked very well and I like the interaction with iTunes on the Mac. Also, I’m hoping this holiday season to upgrade my Mac. Last and my first ever Mac purchase was in October 2004. It’s time for me to get one of those shiny Intel-based iMacs. Santa, are you listening? Having the 120GB iPod would fit this scenario well.

In the Zune corner, bonus points for how the Zune has treated me as a customer by continuing to give me firmware updates on my Zune 30GB with features that are in their next generation devices. I’m intrigued by comparing the channels function to the ‘Genius’ and must admit not being one of the 50% using the FM tuner to date, so that FM to tune capability won’t play much of a factor. I spend 75% of my time in the Windows world and prefer Zune software to iTunes on Windows. Seems like jumping into the 120GB is going to fit my growing music needs well whether it be Zune or iPod.

If I let desire rule my wallet, I’d buy a new iMac, the Zune 120GB and the iPod Touch 32GB tomorrow. Oh temptation, you cruel beast!

1. 11/26/08 6:50am PST: winextra.com–; link path change, archives now require index.php [↩]

Did this post make you go hmm?

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