iTunes 8

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iTunes 8

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Cameron Baker
Kurtis
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Sep. 12, 2008

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Introduction

So rumors have been flying for a few weeks about new iPods, new iPhone software, and new features for iTunes. If you even remotely follow Apple news (or tech news in general), this is pretty standard fare for the time leading up to an Apple press event. In the end, we saw some interesting stuff. While the new hardware is very shiny and new, I don't need a new iPod. But I wouldn't mind a new iTunes.

I used to use MusicMatch Jukebox back in my Sony Vaio days. It had some great music browsing features, you could organize your music any way you wanted, and it was pretty. Once I joined the cult of Apple, I realized that this was a one horse town. iTunes sucked me in, and I have not turned away yet. Over the last few years, Apple has made some great improvements to its media player application. iTunes 8 promises a few big feature additions as well as several fixes and modifications to the existing stuff. New eye candy? Pandora-like automatic playlist creation? HD Video? That all sounds good on paper, so let's see if Apple lives up to the hype. "Let's Rock."

Genius

Whenever I am out and about, needing some good tunes and lacking any reliable source to get them, I turn to Pandora Radio. The ability to stream a playlist of great music just by giving Pandora a single artist or track to work with has kept my ears entertained and even allowed me to discover some new artists over the years. Apple's Genius is now here to do the same for you and your library. Genius works by analyzing your library, anonymously sending information to Apple, and returning the results. This took about 10 minutes on my iMac 2.66GHz for the 9,000 songs in my library. You get a streamlined and Genius-ified version of the Mini-Store as an additional right column in the iTunes window that lists top albums from that artist, top songs missing from your library, and recommendations from other artists, all based on the song you have selected. Hit the genius button in the bottom right corner, and iTunes builds a 25, 50, or 100 song playlist using Genius' recommended songs from your library.

Genius doesn't do a technical analysis of the music; its' recommendations are made based on the purchasing and listening habits of all users in the Genius "cloud." Some tracks aren't categorized yet, but hopefully Apple will get that sorted out. This feature is definitely a little hit-or-miss at this point; several of the tracks I attempted to use (Ratatat's Remixes and a few Sufjan Stevens tracks, for example) did not produce any results. Since Apple is using the aggregated data from all Genius users to build Genius' brain, this will probably improve with time like a fine wine. When it does work, though, Genius is...genius. I was pumped when I used Thin Lizzy's Cowboy Song to make a playlist and it not only picked up on my classic rock - it put freakin' Weezer in there! Weezer, who is basically the modern day Thin Lizzy! If you have no idea what I am talking about, trust me. This is proof enough that Genius is working pretty well in its' debut.

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Page 1: Introduction & Genuis
Page 2: Eye Candy & NBC + HD Television Episodes
Page 3: Odds and Ends & Conclusion

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