First Impressions of iTunes 8 and Genius

09.10.2008 // Music, Tech, Uncategorized // Lee McKusick // No Comments

For those who don’t know, iTunes 8 released today, and brought with it some new features: Grid view, HD tv shows, a new visualizer (which I admit is pretty sick.) The biggest news of all, though, is the Genius functionality. There’s two parts to it, the Genius Sidebar and Genius Playlists.

First observation: In order to use Genius, you have to go through Apple. It’s a centralized system, meaning Apple takes your library information, puts it through the algorithm on their servers, and spits the results back at you. (Second observation the first time takes a long time…). So you paranoid types out there might want to avoid the Genius.

The Genius Sidebar looks at both the currently selected song and the iTunes Music Store and shows you some other top songs by that artist, and other recommended tracks. In my opinion, this is a waste of space. It’s interesting to be sure, but as evidenced by the plethora of tiny “BUY” links, just an extension of the store.

Far more intriguing to me are the Genius Playlists. The premise: click a song, click a button, and a related playlist is generated based on that song. Let’s try it, shall we? (All songs tested are sold through the iTunes Store.)

1. Palisades by Visual Cliff. Genius unavailable. FAIL.
2. King Without a Crown by Matisyahu. Genius unavailable. FAIL.
3. Better Life by Keith Urban. Good results; all Country genre. Returned: Chris Cagle, Dierks Bentley, Tim McGraw. WIN.
4. Beyond Measure by Jeremy Camp. Returned: Sanctus Real, Third Day, Kutless. WIN.
5. Follow the Wolves by Demon Hunter. Returned: Pillar, 12 Stones, Flyleaf, Decyfer Down. Also returned a Dropkick Murphys song, which I found rather odd. Overall though: WIN.

That’s 3 to 2 folks. For now, Genius playlists meet my approval, at least for well-known songs. I’m a little irked that the first two didn’t even show up. Even if they weren’t specifically catalogued by Apple (which would be odd, seeings how they’re both sold in the iTunes store), I would have liked it if it still make an attempt at generating a playlist based on track information. Then again, it is new, so I’ll give it some time to improve.

Next on the list is Grid view, which I have very mixed feelings about. I like the concept. In fact, I love the concept, but there’s some things about the implementation that I decidedly don’t like.

• There’s no way to look at the tracks in an album unless you double-click and enter the album. What I Would Like To See: When you select an album, the tracks in that album show up in a sidebar. Perhaps like the new useless sidebar they just added…
• The Play Album/Artist/Etc button is too small. What I Would Like To See: Expand it to cover the whole bottom third of the album you’re hovering over.
• Not part of Grid view, but they took out right-clicking on the albums in Cover Flow! WTF?! What I Would Like To See: Give me back my right-click menu, Jobs!

That’s all I’ve got for now. I need to play around with iTunes 8 before making any more judgements, but for my initial reactions, I give it about a 6.5.