How’s the new Genius Mixes feature in iTunes 9 working out for you?
I think the idea is good in theory but majorly lacking in execution. First things first, why can’t you rate songs while playing them via a Genius Mix?
It’s pretty confusing that you won’t see Genius Mixes at all until you manually go to the “Store” menu and then choose “Update Genius”. It’s takes several minutes to update and then Genius Mixes will show up in your left sidebar.
I’m also not impressed with the fact that once your Genius Mixes are ready, you can’t see what music those mixes contain, what might be coming up as you play the mix, and can’t use the “Go to Current Song” option to view it in my library and see what else I might have from that artist.
The mixes themselves also boggle my mind. I got 4 alternative and punk mixes, 6 rock mixes, and 2 metal mixes.
Doesn’t it see that all the music it picked for those metal mixes is rated 1 or 2 stars? Doesn’t that imply I don’t like it? A genius should be able to figure out that’s music I don’t want to listen to.
Also, how does it make sense for “Alternative & Punk Mix 4″ to be based on Creedence Clearwater Revival. Wouldn’t they be more appropriate for a classic rock mix or at least one of my 6 regular rock mixes?
And since iTunes tracks the number of times you skip a song, I would like it to integrate that data into my Genius Mixes. Right now they kind of suck and I’m skipping a lot of songs.
At this point, I’m crossing my fingers that Genius Mixes get smarter over time and I’ll stick to the old fashioned Genius Playlists or Smart Playlists.
Related posts:
iTunes Genius Mixes: Now in 12 Different Flavors
Genius for App Store
Wishlist for Future Apple Events
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Agreed. It seems like they took an interesting idea and made it really, really hard to use.
I’m also annoyed at not being able to rate songs. But not everyone uses one- and two-star ratings as negative ratings. I only give songs stars when I like them, and if I keep liking them then I keep adding stars. (In other words, you assign stars like a movie critic, and I assign them like a food critic.)
Interesting analogy. But if you don’t assign any stars how do you differentiate songs you don’t like from songs you just haven’t rated yet?
I have the same complaint, why the hell can’t I rate the songs? Or see the playlist like in a regular genius mix? Seems like a pretty big oversight on Apple’s part.
And you bring up one of the major shortcomings I’ve always felt that Genius had. You should be able to specify that Genius will ignore or not consider in it’s calculations, songs that have below a certain rating. I understand that it would need to look at songs that have no rating, because that’s one of the big strengths of Genius, showing you music that you have but aren’t aware of.
I totally agree that looking at songs with no ratings is a big strength of genius. A few years back I was extremely diligent about rating all my songs. I’ve gotten lazy recently but how I rated the songs I did rate compared to how other people rated those songs and the songs I haven’t rated should get me a pretty solid playlist. In fact, genius playlists work great but I don’t see the same logic being applied to the mixes.
After a few hours of using Genius Mix I’m just grateful that they didn’t disable the Next button. Overall the mixes have been pretty good though.
I’m constantly astonished (and not in a good way) by what “Genius” kicks out: A mix based on a Disturbed song brought me Foghat’s ‘Slow ride’ — I don’t think so!
Completely agree that it has to recognize that low-rated/oft-skipped songs should NOT be included in my mixes. I hear the comment that “single star does not mean dislike”, but in conjunction with a lot of skips.. c’mon.
Yes, I do skip a lot of the tunes Pandora kicks out (paid for the privilege, thank you), but that’s pulling from a lot of stuff I’ve never heard of and gives me the “ok, I won’t play that again/for awhile” message. iTunes just keeps kicking the same damned song(s) at me (and with 85gb of music, that should NOT be the case).
Ok why aren’t these Genius Mixes available for AppleTV? =(
But I am not too sure I like them. One of the mixes was tri-hop (srsly!?!?) and it contained some of Dane Cook’s material. Really? Fail!