unimpressed so far by iTunes “Genius”

In fact, I never knew what it was until a friend just tweeted in praise of it. So I looked into it. One of the things it supposedly does is create interesting playlists by matching together some of the songs in your iTunes library that go well together.

This sounded like it could be fascinating. What sort of rhythmic or harmonic brilliance might the iTunes Genius have? What previously unsuspected resonances might it discover between the various songs I own? Sometimes these sorts of technologies work masterfully well.

So, I tried it, and the results were laughable.

I tried a number of songs, and on the first ten or so the result was “Genius is unavailable for this song.” After a half-dozen or so of these, I decided I needed to go more mainstream with my choices, since maybe I’d been choosing songs that were too obscure to be found in the iTunes computer.

Booker T. and the MG’s. Not so obscure. “Genius is unavailable.”

How about one by Moby? That’s not very obscure. “Genius is unavailable.”

This was getting pretty pathetic, so I chose a can’t miss band, clicking a song by Nirvana. The resulting “playlist” was 10 Nirvana songs alternating with 10 buried MP3’s by Pearl Jam.

Now that’s what I call a daring d.j.! What a risqué, eclectic synthesis of edgy mismatches.