Music from our robot overlords

[resonant]

iTunes 8 has this function called Genius, which makes a customized playlist starting from a song you choose. Preliminary observations:

- Genius is inordinately fond of the Cowboy Junkies' "Misguided Angel," which shows up in about 50% of the playlists it generates.



- About half of my music is stuff Genius can't recognize. Celtic, folk, Revels records, African pop, Mexican baroque, bluegrass/roots music. Which is a shame, because that part is the part I'd most like to see playlists from.

- I'd love to know how it works, because clearly it's not just matching genre and period. It makes suggestions that are eccentric and yet weirdly appropriate. A playlist based on the Specials' "A Message For You, Rudy," gets a fair bit of ska-influenced '80s music, as you would predict, but it also goes backward to pick up the Who's "Substitute" and forward to grab the Killers' "I Predict A Riot" and the Arctic Monkeys' "Fake Tales of San Francisco." One based on the Magnetic Fields' "Time Enough For Rocking When We're Old" grabs a lot of stuff from the place where alternative meets singer-songwriter, but also picks up Chad and Jeremy's "A Summer Song," Fleetwood Mac's "Never Going Back Again," and Bruce Springsteen's version of the traditional "O Mary Don't You Weep."

- The "we suggest you buy these songs from the iTunes music store" function is much less useful than the "we've dredged these songs up from the depths of your music collection" function. I made a playlist based on Dan Bern's "Jane," and Genius suggested that I buy ... five more songs by Dan Bern, plus five more songs with "Jane" in the title.

- It's really kind of frightening how much incredibly cheesy music I own. I will maintain to my death that Three Dog Night's "Shambhala" is a good song, but a playlist based on it is like turning over a rock. Who knew I owned E.L.O.'s "Don't Bring Me Down" or America's "Sister Golden Hair"?

Here, have a playlist; this is generated from Tim O'Brien's "Bow Down," from a collection based on Cold Mountain.

Tim O'Brien, Dirk Powell, and John Herrmann: Bow Down
Nickel Creek: When In Rome
Tony Rice and Ricky Skaggs: Mansions For Me
Asleep At the Wheel: Choo Choo Ch'Boogie
Hank Williams: Window Shoppin'
Dolly Parton: Marry Me
Lyle Lovett: If I Had A Boat
Vince Gill: One More Last Chance
Randy Travis: Deeper Than the Holler
David Allan Coe: You Never Even Called Me By My Name
Sammy Kershaw: She Don't Know She's Beautiful
Tim and Mollie O'Brien: Don't Let Me Come Home A Stranger
Nanci Griffith: Last Of The True Believers
Tim O'Brien, Dirk Powell, and John Herrmann: Backstep Cindy
Johnny Cash: Folsom Prison Blues
Shania Twain: Whose Bed
Tony Rice and Ricky Skaggs: Where The Soul Of Man Never Dies
Roger Miller: King of the Road
Tim O'Brien: Man Gave Names To All The Animals
Hank Williams: Cold, Cold Heart
Glenn Campbell: Galveston
Bill Monroe: Uncle Pen
Brooks & Dunn: Brand New Man
Patty Loveless: Blame It On Your Heart
Patty Loveless: Rise Up, Lazarus

Comments

[sobelle.livejournal.com]

Me again =P

The one thing I dislike about my Mac is that I can't use Winamp which is my preferred music player. Instead I have iTunes which is a big pain in my arse.

(which means that converting m4a to mp3 is possible but I don't know how to bypass iTunes)

So all the m4a's will be available as download only on Box.net as opposed to being able to just stream and listen. =/