Friday, September 12, 2008

Apple's Genius Playlist

I'm an enormous music fan. I like almost everything BUT country. I've never made that a secret.


At my job, I listen to my MP3 collection all day. This has precipitated the need to really ramp up the volume of the library. Over the years, I've burned every CD I own. Ask OhCountess, there are boxes and boxes of CD's in our basement. In my younger days, let's call it pre-domestication, if I had money, I bought music.

Anywho, let's move forward to today. iTunes has been my application of choice for delivering my tunes to my ears. It's interface was easy and clean. It seemed to handle a large library fine and the ease at which I can buy a song I'm missing is second to none. Damn you Apple. 

The latest version of the software, 8.0 was released earlier this week. Most of the last few upgrades have been eye candy only. Nothing truly groundbreaking...I'm not into movie rentals or TV shows...but this release finally had something for the large library music junkies like me. The Genius Playlist.

Not sure how they do it, but they scan your and send it to a cloud (long techie idea..another post) that chews the playlist and compares it and your ratings to millions of other users. Now, when I select a song and hit the Genius Playlist button...wham! A playlist is built around that song.

I was pretty apprehensive at first. I've seen systems like this before and frankly, they really sucked.  Apple's version how ever seems to have some legs. I've been using this feature for about 3 days and it's is rare that I skip a song. I've even rediscovered old tracks buried within the 12,000 songs in my library. I've been starting my day by selecting a song that best fits the mood I'm in or the mood I'd like to be in, selecting it in the library and hitting the Genius button.  BOOM! A playlist.  Seriously sweet!

What is your favorite music app? Do you use iTunes? Why do people call me unAmerican for loathing country music?

This geek labels this upgrade...rockin'!

3 comments:

Kat said...

I use iTunes too. I haven't had time to mess around too much with the new version yet.

OhCaptain said...

Thanks for stopping by Kat. I'd love to hear your experiences with the new Genius feature. I had one bad mix today from it. Picked a Green Day - American Idiot song, and the my playlist filled with Ashlee Simpson songs. [shivers]

WeaselMomma said...

Seriously cool. I will have to check out that feature. P.S. I like country music, Not crazy fanatic or anything, and have many friends who claim to despise it. However, when listening to my playlists keep going "Oh, I like this song" or find themselves singing along. They like more country than they actually realize. Not that this is the case with you, but you never know.