Comments on: Trials and Tribulations with iTunes Genius Mixes

By: Gyffes

Gyffes — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 17:19:28 +0000

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).

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[...] other day, I was desparate for a quick mix and decided to give genius mixes a second chance. Previously I had lamented about how I had been given multiple iterations of only 3 genre based mixes rather than a true 12 different [...]

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By: missmarisol

missmarisol — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 07:15:00 +0000

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!

By: Django

Django — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:20:22 +0000

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.

By: carrie

carrie — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:16:22 +0000

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.

By: Django

Django — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:02:42 +0000

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.

By: carrie

carrie — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:33:49 +0000

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?

By: Gabe

Gabe — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:14:13 +0000

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.)

By: Jonathan Haddad

Jonathan Haddad — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:27:39 +0000

Agreed. It seems like they took an interesting idea and made it really, really hard to use.