Have you tried the new version of iTunes?
From Apple's Website
If you have, you’ll notice that the new big feature is ‘Genius’. Select a song and Genius will instantly create a playlist from your library with songs ‘that sound great together’ – instant good playlist based on one song. iTunes does this by first analyzing all the playlists that users have been sending in for years. It then (anonymously) analyzes your music collection and picks up patterns of tastes. Listeners of Band A also appear to like Band B, based on playlists and associated music collections. iTunes can then throw you a list of related bands’ songs within your library, while slyly recommending more music from the iTunes music store. It’s a brilliant little symbiotic scheme that helps iTunes users and Apple at the same time.
But it’s lacking.
First of all, the Genius feature can only consider songs already in the iTunes music store. This means that if you like slightly underground bands, Genius won’t do much for you (The Beatles aren’t in the iTunes music store either). Fans of obscure, weird genres won’t get their favorite music played; they’ll just get the most popular matches as told by iTunes. Sure, some bands are really just that obscure, but that didn’t stop the social music scene at Last.fm from cataloging millions of songs, both well-known and unknown (Last.fm is an online music community with an advanced recommendation system and millions of users to power it. I was never much of a user). Another advantage Last.fm has over iTunes’ Genius is that it’s main purpose is for users to recommend and find new music based on similar tastes; iTunes just does that on the side, and only recently. Genius is also just stupid sometimes and puts opposing songs next to each other; a Björk song led to that Numa Numa song. Over time, both iTunes and Last.fm will become ‘smarter’ and deliver more of the general consensus of what songs ‘sound great together’. And yes, despite shortcomings, I’ll be using the Genius feature every once in awhile because it’s useful.
But there is something better out there…
I’m talking about the other giant of online music services: Pandora.
The purpose of Pandora is the same as Last.fm (find new music) but it functions in a completely different way. Pandora is fundamentally powered by the Music Genome Project, an ambitious project where the goal is to individually categorize every song with hundreds of characteristics, or ‘genes’.
For example – The Beatles’ Strawberry Fields Forever. According to the Music Genome Project, this song has:
- mellow rock instrumentation
- intricate melodic phrasing
- a clear focus on recording studio production
- major key tonality
- string section beds
Along with tons of other musical ‘genes’, each assigned a number between 1-5. For comparison, iTunes doesn’t even have this song.
With the Music Genome Project, Pandora can group and recommend songs that are ‘genetically’ similar, ignoring the public perception of the artist who wrote it and other people’s common tastes. At it’s best, Pandora can reliably identify songs that purely sound similar and play them back-to-back. Pandora acts as a personal radio where you pick the genre and play similar songs, all while fine tuning your preferences with a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ option. Pandora’s known catalog of music is very expansive too.
In this day and age, a service such as Pandora can’t get away with such awesomeness easily. Due to encroaching copyright issues and threats, it’s function has been pretty crippled. No longer can anyone use Pandora outside the United States. Songs cannot be rewound or replayed; if you missed it, it’s gone. Pandora also uses your given song or artist as just a starting point, so you can’t seek out individual songs. The music analysis algorithm takes full control once in motion and you can’t tell it exactly what to play. Lastly, you only can use up to 6 song skips an hour. Once you hit that hourly limit, Pandora becomes a smart radio with a pause button, but no more control than that. Pandora lives up to it’s name, in this sense, and is an intelligent but uncontrollable beast. You can guide it but you can’t decide where it ultimately goes.
Of the three big music recommendation services, I’d favor Pandora over Last.fm and iTunes Genius, just for the innovative use of the Music Genome Project. They all differ pretty significantly and cater to separate crowds and uses. The best service would be the combination of all these projects into one omega music discovery service. Imagine – the pure intelligence of the Music Genome Project, the accessibility and integration of iTunes’ Genius and the active community of Last.fm, with the sum total of all their respective listening records. With free downloads and every song in existence, ever. I might even use that service. Get on it, Apple!
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