Genius at work (the sequel)
Yours truly, a few days ago, contemplating the new iTunes Genius Mix function:
What I really want to see, I think, is what the Genius deems appropriate to go with, say, Tim Curry’s “I Do the Rock.”
This is precisely what the Genius horked up for me:
Tim Curry, “I Do the Rock”
The Flying Lizards, “Money (That’s What I Want)”
The Jim Carroll Band, “People Who Died”
Nick Lowe, “Cruel to Be Kind”
Dave Edmunds, “Slipping Away”
Wall of Voodoo, “Mexican Radio”
Devo, “Working in the Coal Mine”
The Waitresses, “I Know What Boys Like”
Thomas Dolby, “Hyperactive”
Bob Welch, “Ebony Eyes”
Nick Lowe, “So It Goes”
Loudon Wainwright III, “Dead Skunk”
Talk Talk, “Talk Talk”
Reunion, “Life Is a Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me)”
John Stewart, “Gold”
Fun Boy Three, “Our Lips Are Sealed”
Trio, “Da Da Da”
Timbuk3, “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades”
Devo, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”
Melanie, “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)”
Warren Zevon, “Excitable Boy”
Was (Not Was), “Walk the Dinosaur”
Nick Lowe, “I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass”
Dada, “Dizz Knee Land”
Adam Ant, “Goody Two Shoes”
This actually flows pretty well, but two Devo tracks? And three Nick Lowe tracks, none of which is “Marie Provost”?
canadienne »
20 September 2009 · 11:14 am
Wow, interesting playlist (and not too much overlap with my collection, which makes me wish even more that I could hack your network just to listen to your iTunes library. At work, we all share libraries.) There’s a couple tunes on there that I had forgotten about, so I am heading over to the iTunes store right now (all my music is legal, which shows how old I am – pay for music, what an odd concept.)
I do find it a bit odd and annoying the way that Genius puts songs together sometimes – like the two Devo tracks. I find that it seems to pull the most popular tracks from albums. I’d love to know what their algorithm is.
You must have an amazing music collection.
CGHill »
20 September 2009 · 11:52 am
Not so amazing, except perhaps in terms of volume: were I to spend the rest of the year ripping all the vinyl and CDs on the premises, I could easily build it up to 25,000 tracks. This is, however, not an objectively-impressive figure: there are plenty of people who have amassed much more stuff than this.
Trini brought her iPod over to show me a few things — she has about 8800 songs — and we had a brief discussion over Tagging, Accuracy Of. Apparently I am the only person on earth who resorts individual artists by last name, so Alan Jackson, Chuck Jackson, Deon Jackson, Janet Jackson, J. J. Jackson, Michael Jackson, Stonewall Jackson, and any other Jacksons which may come along will fall neatly into the Js. (There was a brief digression into the unaccountable failure of Better Than Ezra to title their greatest-hits set Best of Ezra, but we won’t go there.)
A test with Minnie Riperton’s “Lovin’ You,” incidentally, produced rather a lot of funk and slow jams, biased toward the latter: more Stylistics than the Parliafunkadelicment Thang.
Jason B. »
20 September 2009 · 11:19 pm
We may have similarly sized music collections (I am at 20,579 tracks after ripping ~80% of the collection), but I would definitely give you the advantage when comparing ratio of quality over quantity.